


A Better Tomorrow

by teamfreetitan



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alcohol, Bisexual Harry Potter, Canon Timeline, Draco Malfoy-centric, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Gay Draco Malfoy, Harry Potter-centric, Hogwarts Eighth Year, Inter-House Unity, M/M, Minor Harry Potter/Ginny Weasley, Minor Hermione Granger/Ron Weasley, Mutual Pining, Nightmares, Pining, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Quidditch Player Harry Potter, Roommates, Sharing a Room, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-04
Updated: 2017-09-04
Packaged: 2018-11-09 00:51:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 25,607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11093481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/teamfreetitan/pseuds/teamfreetitan
Summary: The wizarding world after the war was all about making life better. Work hard, love deeply, spread acceptance. Good and evil aren't traits one is born with, they are what a person chooses to do. Everyone can choose to do good, and if you choose to do good today, tomorrow will be even better.Harry thought it was true enough. You make your own choices, no matter the circumstances. Still, you can't control everything. You can't control nightmares or your inability to focus or your exhaustion. All you can do is survive, and try to do good along the way.Draco thought it was bullshit. Sometimes, you can't choose good, even when you want to. The world is cruel and makes you do evil. All you can do is survive.Sometimes, you don't do good to the world; sometimes, the world does good to you.





	1. One - Harry

 

Harry Potter was, first and foremost, exhausted. There were many reasons why.

The first reason he was exhausted was because he finally could be. You can’t be tired when you’re hunting the most notorious dark wizard alive. Would he attack your school? Your friends? You? When everything you care about is on the line and an insane murderer is on the loose, you don’t get to be tired. The post war era was all about doing what you couldn’t before, and for Harry, that meant being tired.

The second reason was the nightmares. Every time he attempted to get some much needed rest, the images, the sounds, they overwhelmed him. While staying at the Burrow over summer vacation, he routinely fell asleep in one of the spare beds - or sometimes Ginny’s - and woke up screaming. Luckily, Molly had calming spells and herbal teas, but nothing seemed to do the trick. Once, she made a dreamless sleep potion, which had been successful, but Harry hadn’t pressed her for another batch; she had a lot going on. With back to school around the corner, he was almost, almost, worried about his nightmares. Besides traumatizing his waking hours and dark nights, he didn’t want to disturb his dorm mates. Those who were coming back, that was.

Finally, it was just the _people_ . They wouldn’t leave him alone. Walking down Diagon Alley to get supplies filled him with deja vu. The owl rattling in his cage (as much as he didn’t want to replace Hedwig, failing to have an owl would be inconvenient), book bag dangling in his hands, and people running up to greet and thank him. Many he had never met. Many never even introduced themselves or told him what they were thanking him for. The stream of people was endless. Not to mention, their constant favors were endless. Busied wizards held doors when they would have let them slam. The owner of the local owlry tried to sell him owl supplies, “Half off, for our hero.” The worst part, Harry thought, was that they were being _sincere_. It wasn’t sarcastic or snide - like Malfoy would have spat it out - because these people genuinely thought so.

Being a hero in the public eye was so tiring. Everything you did, everything you said, mere strangers latched onto and worshipped like gospel. You can’t let them down if you’re not their hero.

Half the time, Harry wanted to respond to their thanks by shouting, “For what? All I’ve done is get people killed in my name! Even if Voldemort is dead, dark wizards are still out there, still killing, so the problem is not solved! Even if it were, it would be thanks to the aurors, not me!”

Usually, he held it together with a forced smile.

School was starting in a week. Harry, on a whim, decided to return to finish his schooling. School wasn’t his thing - he was all reaction and no action, so learning in a classroom was a million times harder than learning on the go - but Hermione was returning, Ginny had to go, and Hermione had somehow looped Ron into it, too.

The Minister of Magic technically offered a job in an auror position, saying his previous experience would more than suffice for the equivalent of testing scores. Special treatment made him feel out of place - he didn’t deserve it - so he declined.

Auror, huh.

He’d had enough dark magic to last a hundred lifetimes, but at this point, he couldn’t imagine doing anything else with his life.

Exactly as he remembered… back to school was all hustle and bustle. The Great Hall stood proud, as if it were never destroyed in the first place. Wild eyed first years bounced on the balls of their feet with anticipation as they waited for the Sorting Hat. Students chattered. The tables looked emptier than usual, but that was likely due to the fact that many hadn’t returned.

Last years sixth years were required to, to graduate, but the previous seventh years were not. Though they never formally finished their education, they were granted an out. Those who returned, dubbed “eighth years,” were taking the same classes as their seventh year peers, just a little older, a little more experienced.

The Slytherin table was the most drab of all. The younger students looked upset to have to bare the green of their robes, as if it were a shame. Harry didn’t think it was inherently a Slytherin thing, to be evil. Pettigrew betrayed Harry’s parents and got them murdered, and he’d been a Gryffindor. Even the Sorting Hat thought Slytherin to be a suitable place for Harry to be. Even if it wasn’t inherently evil, it was about ambition, and ambition leads to success, and success leads to greed. Harry couldn’t help the general loathing that settled in the pit of his stomach when he looked at their table. It couldn’t be a coincidence that most Death Eaters and magic-doers-gone-wrong were from the house. Voldemort, Bellatrix, Malfoy, among others.

Speaking of Malfoy, it was like the Slytherins hated him the most out of anyone. It was a kind of “You bring us all down,” thing.

Regardless, he still held that arrogance about him. His chin was held high, almost proudly. Harry had seen Malfoy cry, seen his hesitance to carry out his task of killing Dumbledore. That didn’t change the fact that he was a Death Eater. That didn’t change the fact that he worked for the darkest wizard of all time, had shared a home with him, had felt those cool, clammy hands as that searing, permanent mark was tattooed into his arm. And, most of all, it didn’t change the fact that he didn’t seem to regret it at all.

Malfoy caught him staring. He rolled his eyes and directed his gaze to the front of the hall, where the new Headmistress had mounted the podium.

Headmistress McGonagall’s opening speech was much more severe and drab than Dumbledore’s had been. She didn’t seem to have that gleam in her eye. In fact, Harry had never seen her hair greyer.

She spoke of house unity. She spoke of how, now more than ever, it was important to unite the students into one whole. She explained that dark wizards are rooted in ignorance and prejudice and the inability to understand their peers. Had many dark wizards understood that magic is not determined by your blood status, or any other fickle thing, they wouldn’t be dark wizards. Evil, she said, is not how we are born, it is how we are raised. Evil is not in our beliefs or our personality, but in our actions. “How can Hogwarts claim to be the greatest school when some of our most academically apt end up turning to dark magic because when we were teaching them spells, we were not teaching them to love? How can we claim to be the best when students are hexing each other left and right. I’ve seen it happen; I’ve always seen it happen, but not anymore. Not today. Not tomorrow.”

The tagline of her message, which Harry heard teachers repeat and saw posted on the walls of the school, “Practicing good today will make tomorrow even better.”

It meant that goodness is a choice. Anyone could be good, if they choose to be. Voldemort, Malfoy, Harry… whether they are good or bad is up to them. If everyone is good today - kind to all, inviting, tolerant - tomorrow’s world will be a wonderful place to live in.

This concept of house unity meant a lot of things. Houses would always be a part of the Hogwarts system, but reforms would be made. Quidditch remained; house points did not. The older students huffed and puffed, but the competition between groups made it harder to be on good terms with your peers. Classes based on house would now be with whoever was in the year, so students could get to know those they don’t live with or socialize with much.

As for the returning seventh years, the eighth years, alternative arrangements than house dormitories would be used for sleeping. You would still be part of your original house, and reflect your house, and play for your house in Quidditch. This was not about house unity, but a matter of space. With the remodeled castle, they would need to accommodate more students. So, the proposal was to have a house for the returning students. They knew each other already, and there were fewer attending classes this year than, say, first years. Finding them elsewhere to stay was the most beneficial option. They would meet her in the East Wing corridor after the banquet for more information and details. Now, let the sorting commence!

The first kid was a Hufflepuff. A Ravenclaw. Another Hufflepuff. Gryffindor! The tables cheered at the smiling faces of their new, young house members. Slytherin. The hall got eerily silent.

Hermione, later, would express sympathy.

Houses brought a sense of community to the school. It gave those kids who were lost, who entered a world unknown to them, a place to call home. That was certainly what it did for Harry. He couldn’t imagine arriving at the school to be shunned by everyone. Then again, not everyone was Harry Potter.

They got through their meal successfully.

Harry may have almost fallen asleep.

Ron and Hermione sat on the opposite side of the table, fingers linked under the table. Ginny sat to Harry’s right, and she was babbling about the new Quidditch season. She, like the whole Weasley family, was still mourning the death of her brother, but Ginny was one of the strongest people Harry had ever met.

Ginny Weasley was a combination of every favorable trait. She had a brilliant mind and was apt at nearly every magical subject, from herbology to potions to spells. She played Quidditch and was one of the best players. She was emotional enough to genuinely feel, but strong enough to not let it tear her to shreds. She was feminine and attractive; she was tough and strong.

Ginny Weasley had been in love with him her whole life.

“Harry? Are you listening?” she asked.

He blinked rapidly. “Sorry, sorry. I’m exhausted. Last night…” Those around him could fill in the blanks. They’d all been at the house. They all heard how Harry woke, screaming. They knew. They understood.

That was one of the best things about them, is that they understood, or at least, they tried. Usually.

“Sorry. I just asked if you planned to play quidditch this season. I mean, you’ve got to, you’re the best seeker in a hundred years, but I get it if you don’t want to…”

Harry shrugged. “I probably will.”

By the time the students had finished their meal, Harry had almost, just almost, forgotten about the eighth year dormitory situation. He bid Ginny a goodnight, kissing her forehead, before Hermione dragged him to the East Wing, where they were to receive the information the headmistress had said she would provide.

Upon arrival, McGonagall was standing with a small group forming around her already. “Potter, Weasley, Granger, that makes everyone. I’ll begin. Due to the dormitory situation, and the significantly fewer number of students who have returned to complete the year, we have a handful of rooms, with two beds each. Boys will dorm with boys, girls with girls. Though, due to uneven numbers from each house, and house unity, you will not be with someone from your house. I have a randomized list of students and who your dorm mate will be.”

Ron and Harry made eye contact. The ginger rolled his eyes.

“I’ll go over some other information before reading it, because you need to hear it. There is a small common room within. The password is ‘calico.’ You will all get the password to your house dorms as well, just ask a prefect or the head boy or girl of your house. Fighting with your new dorm members will result in punishment, so please get along. Now, the list…”

It couldn’t be that bad. Gryffindor had the most boys returning, so that blocked out a bit of potential roommates for him. Obviously, he couldn’t room with a girl, either. That left Justin Finch-Fletchley, Terry Boot, Michael Corner, Anthony Goldstein, Theo Nott, Blaise Zabini, or Malfoy. Harry wasn’t too concerned. There was no way he’d be put with Malfoy, unless the teachers wanted trouble. Nott and Zabini were Slytherin, but not too bad. Anyone else would be perfectly fine. It wouldn’t be the same as his Gryffindor roommates, but it could be worse.

McGonagall had reached the boys section on her list, and Hermione had been paired with Padma Patil. She and the Ravenclaw bookworm would get along just fine. As she read, harry listened closely. “Terry Boot and Theodore Nott. Michael Corner and Justin Finch-Fletchley. Anthony Goldstein and Neville Longbottom. Draco Malfoy and Harry Potter. Ronald Weasley and Blaise Zabini.”

Ron had Zabini, not a bad fellow, but definitely not the nicest. And Harry… Harry was stuck with Draco Malfoy. Of all the people in the world, of all the guys he could have been stuck with, it was Malfoy. Great.

About to open his mouth and protest, McGonagall cut him off. “All roommates are final, as they were randomized, not hand selected. Failure to cooperate will result in punishment, and it will not be eased for anyone.”

Malfoy was looking at Harry with a peculiar look in his eye.

The headmistress pushed open the door after whispering the password, and inside was a dingy room with a fire in the middle. Like everything at Hogwarts, it was very grand, but it lacked the warmth of the Gryffindor common room. Instead of being red, it was a smash of rainbow, blue clashing with green clashing with yellow clashing with red. There weren’t enough chairs for everyone and on either side of the room, staircases ascended upwards, with boys on the left and girls on the right.

Their trunks, she informed them, had already been placed in their rooms.

The room itself even lacked the homely feel of his old one. His trunk was placed with the utmost care at the foot of his bed, a full bed, with an entirely white ensemble. Two pillows were fluffed upon its head. His broomstick was laid on his bed, polished and shiny. Malfoy’s things, on the other hand, looked haphazardly thrown across his half of the room, and he didn’t even have a broomstick with him.

Harry began to unpack, quickly, facing the door. He slid his broomstick under his bed - what could he say, other than he lacked trust - and started towards the bathrooms to change and brush his teeth. He returned, bed ready, and Malfoy hadn’t made an appearance yet.

He’d been listening to McGonagall, he’d been at the opening ceremony, so where had he gone off to?

Other than their few belongings, the room was drab. The walls were cold stone, and the only things that adorned the small space was two beds, one long nightstand in between with a torch over it, and a mirror on the opposite wall, with white frames, which was mainly used to make it look bigger. Above each bed was a window. Harry could see the lake.

Time ticked and ticked and ticked, and Malfoy never showed. He didn’t want to be asleep when Malfoy arrived, but it felt impossible to keep his eyes open, and his pajama pants were so soft, and his bed was right there…He crawled under the covers, which were softer than he expected, and let his eyes fall shut.

_The screaming. He couldn’t forget the screaming. Everyone. Everyone. His parents, his friends, his classmates._

_It was his fault._

_His fault._

_He could hear the whisper of Voldemort’s voice; it still echoed in his head. The sickly sounds of a croaking voice, calling out to him._

_Then Voldemort was there, in front of him. He was whiter than a ghost, his spindly fingers curled in on themselves like a spider swept from under the bed. His cloak was blacker than night, and contrasted his skin. Webbing under that skin stood miles and miles of veins, blue and pulsing._

_Pulsing._

_Pulsing._

_Harry, himself, was held against a tree, unable to think, to move, to fight. Voldemort raised his wand and opened his mouth and Harry Potter, the boy who lived, was surrounded in green…_

He woke up screaming. Before he could even register the shadow of his room - where was he, again? - he got slammed with something big and plush. Malfoy’s pillow.

“Shut _up,_ Potter, some of us are trying to sleep.”

Apparently, at some time in the past - what time was it? - hour, Malfoy had decided to go to bed. Where _had_ he been? It didn’t really matter, Harry supposed, as long as they tried not to cross paths. It was a miracle that Malfoy hadn’t come in, seen Harry helpless and asleep in his bed, and murdered him right then and there. Though, as a Slytherin, he was ambitious and cunning and strategic, so it would be obvious who had done it. Though Malfoy may have gotten off of his Death Eater charges (conspiracy to commit murder, assisting Voldemort, etc.) he definitely could not avoid charges for killing Harry Potter.

“Shut up, Malfoy.” Harry couldn’t manage some sassy retort at the moment. His hands were knotted in the white bed sheets, palms sweaty and trembling. His face was wet with tears, and his throat still felt tight. Malfoy’s pillow was still on his lap, so he just tossed it back towards his new roommate.

He wouldn’t be able to go back to sleep now, he figured.

Harry sighed, slipping out of bed and pulling on slippers and his invisibility cloak. There was no reason to stay here when he couldn’t sleep and all he would do would be to listen to Malfoy’s breathing.

With a lumos spell illuminating the tip of his wand, he made his way outside. It was only the first of September, so though the coolness of autumn was winding its way into Hogwarts grounds, it was still warm, enough so for Harry to take a midnight stroll across the grounds.

This must’ve been the first time he had been alone in a while. He wanted to think. He was just so tired.

Maybe returning was a mistake. He would not be able to do any course work if he was exhausted constantly. He would fail his tests. Sure, he could get a job without them, but that was unfair. Yet, classes hadn’t even started and he was already too tired. Harry was concerned. This must have been a mistake. Had to have been. Hermione, Ron, Ginny, they would be fine. They didn’t get these nightmares. They would get the sleep to succeed in their last year. Harry would be lucky to survive the first semester.

The grounds, at night, were so empty. The forest, even, was bare of rustling. So much had happened there. So much had happened on these grounds. In the day, students studies and played Quidditch and chatted, but at night, it was just Harry.

He ought to go find Hagrid.

As he looked in the direction of Hagrid’s hut, he saw the lights were out. Tomorrow.

Everything would have to wait until tomorrow.

Harry sat outside all night. He slept longer than expected, because the sun began to rise in a few hours. The sunrise was beautiful, and Harry made it inside in time to get ready. He was yawning heavily, with a full day ahead of him, but he just splashed water on his face.

Today was another day. Harry would survive today. Because that was what Harry did. Survived.

 


	2. Two - Draco

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Draco had better things to concern himself with than what others thought about him. Their opinions didn't change who he was. What he was concerning himself with was his sleep, which was so rudely pulled from his grasp every night. What he was concerning himself with was Harry Potter.

 

If the way he awoke on his first morning of school was any indicator or how his day would go, his day would be incredibly vexing.  

Imagine, if you can, this scenario: You’re back at school. Against all odds, you’re back. You were taken to trial, because you were a cohort to what was possibly the darkest wizard of all time. Against all odds, you escaped the charges, and you get the opportunity to finish your schooling and take back your life. It’s been less than twelve hours since you returned to Hogwarts, and all you’ve received is dirty looks. You down the sleeping potion and try to get some rest, sleep it off, and then what? Your new roommate wakes you up, screaming at the top of his lungs.

Great, right? Draco  _ certainly _ thought so. Thankfully, Potter decided to leave less than five minutes later, so Draco was able to settle back into bed, clutching his pillow to his chest, and falling back asleep. 

Hours later, at the crack of dawn, before the sun was even in the sky, Draco was awoken yet again, by Potter roughly opening the door, and then trying to close it softly. If it weren’t for that damn cloak - yes, Draco knew about it - Potter would never have been successful at sneaking around. He was obnoxiously loud. 

Draco didn’t bother to say anything this time, simply rolled over. Potter loudly rummaged through his trunk, and disappeared into the boys’ bathrooms. When he didn’t return quickly, Draco assumed that he’d gone to shower. 

He checked the time, and he still had thirty minutes, at least, to sleep in, but of course, Potter had to wake him up. Just enough sunlight peered through his window to prevent him from getting the rest of his direly needed sleep. He sat up, stretched, and decided to swap out trousers for green, silk pajama bottoms and a white button up for his grey t-shirt. Despite whatever their new headmistress said about house unity, Draco was a Slytherin through and through, so he knotted the green and silver tie around his throat. He’d get the glares regardless of whether he was wearing green or red, so what did it matter.   


The glares and insults and remarks were more of an inconvenience to him than anything. He was a Malfoy, and he stood with pride. His choices - to be a Death Eater, to live with Voldemort, to be the one tasked with murdering Dumbledore - had hardly been choices. Why should one be ashamed - or proud, for that matter - of things they didn’t choose?

Draco refused to feel ashamed for being a Death Eater, when he had no other option. In similar regards, Potter shouldn’t be proud to have been the Boy Who Lived, as he didn’t choose that for himself. 

Sometimes, you just have to do what you have to do, even if that means becoming a Death Eater.

The glares, the insults, the remarks, they didn’t change anything. Draco was still Draco, Draco had still been a Death Eater, Draco was still a top student. They just got in his way. 

Potter entered the room just as Draco pulled the black cloak around him and buttoned it in the front. Draco regarded himself in the white framed mirror, and in the reflection, he could see Potter burning holes into the back of his skull. “No need to stare, Potter,” Draco said, with that pretentious voice he saved specially for Potter. He wasn’t going to get on his knees and worship Potter like everyone else had decided to do - war hero or not, Potter was still flawed and still a git. Their eyes locked through the mirror. 

“Whatever,” Potter scoffed, and went back to digging through his trunk. Draco decided not to concern himself with it. 

His day, overall, was better than he expected it to be.

First period, potions class. Potter and Weasley were both in that class, and sat at the front of the room together. Clearly, not everyone had listened to McGonagall’s blabbering about that house unity shit, about making friends in different houses. Draco himself took a seat in the back of the room, letting his bag fall to the ground and emit a loud  _ klunk _ as his books hit the wood. He draped himself across the chair, arms tossed behind the chair back, legs dangling and spread. He stared straight ahead and waited for class to start. 

The bell rung, and Slughorn rushed in, three books in one arm and two glass vials filled with a periwinkle potion in the other. He set them down on the main desk and smiled up at the class. He was about to start talking, had just opened his mouth, when some girl, a seventh year Ravenclaw, burst in, shouting, “Sorry I’m late, Professor.” She looked around, searching for a seat, but there was only one, to Draco’s right. “Professor, where should I sit?” 

Draco scoffed. For a Ravenclaw, she was either surprisingly stupid, or a surprisingly good actress. 

“Well,” Slughorn began, “there’s a seat right there next to Mr. Malfoy.” 

The Ravenclaw girl seemed disappointed that the whole class hadn’t been rearranged because of her. She took her seat, defeated, muttering about not wanting to sit next to the Death Eater. But, what had she expected? She was the one who was late, after all, and she wasn’t going to get any special privileges. Who did she think she was, Potter?

After that incident, most of his school day was incident free. Save for finding the word “murderer” written on a piece of his parchment, nothing else exciting happened. Seriously, there was nothing intriguing that could happen while Professor Binns droned on about the syllabus, most of which they already knew. The first day was always the most boring.

As it was lovely outside, he decided to go sit in the grass and read. Over the summer, he hadn’t left the manor, hadn’t done anything, so he had taken to exploring the house for anything of substance. He hadn’t done that since he was a child, but then, he had had restrictions, and he hadn’t realized what some of the things were or what they meant. This past summer, he could go wherever, and was able to understand more of it. Particularly, the library had caught his interest. For a family with so much blood prejudice, a family that had taught him to hate anyone who wasn’t pureblood, they had an entire section of muggle books. He’d gotten about half-way through the section before school started. His parents didn’t like him taking books from their home library out of the library, let alone to Hogwarts, but he ended up taking a couple of his favorites and some he wanted to read. In his hands sat a book of poetry and short stories by an American muggle writer in the 1800s. The poems were heartbroken and the stories macabre. Draco found them… a good read.

The late summer sun reflected harsh white light off of the pristine pages of the book. 

Draco must have been the only person on the grounds alone. Looking up, all his peers were in pairs or groups. Even since last night, he’d noticed how desperately everyone clung to each other, like it had hit them how easily they could be pulled apart. Couples were even more lovey-dovey. Friends laid in the grass, practically laying on top of each other. Everyone had their loved ones by their sides, except Draco, who just had his book. 

Absent-mindedly, he wished his friends had come back. Out of the three people he had considered friends - though, even through his later years, Draco had pulled away, but still considered them to be his friends - none had returned. 

Crabbe had died. There was no point in beating around the bush. 

Goyle had disappeared, no word to Draco, or anyone, for that matter. Draco had no idea where he was. The bloke wouldn’t reply to any of his owls. Maybe he’d gone to start a new - a better - life. 

Pansy, she was the complicated one. They’d been friends since first year and dated for a while, though they both agreed that it was more for appearance than actual feelings. In the whole year, they never even kissed. She’d broken up with him, though they kept in touch. She’d chosen not to return to finish her schooling, and had opted to practice potion making in America for a while. 

That left Draco the only one in this field alone.

Over the edge of the book, he watched people. He saw Granger and Weasley sitting in the shade. Potter - Potter caught his eye - walked out of the castle and toward the wide, green expansion. He was going towards his two friends… and just kept going. Granger opened her mouth, called out to him, probably, and he looked over, smiled, shook his head, and just kept going. 

That evening, Draco took a swig of the potion vial hidden in his trunk, slipped into bed, and was awoken to more screams. 

“No!” The lump of blankets parallel to him thrashed around. “Stop! I won’t let you!”

For a second, just a second, Draco couldn’t be annoyed, he couldn’t be upset, he couldn’t be angry, he could just be afraid. Before he became a Death Eater, he had woken up to almost the exact same screams, but they hadn’t come from Potter; they had come from his mother. 

In the foyer of the manor, house guests were talking, but these weren’t your run-of-the-mill house guests. With a father loyal to the Dark Lord, you couldn’t just say no when Voldemort asked to room with you. And, technically, some of the guests were family members, which Draco used to lie to himself and tell himself that this was  _ normal _ .

It was anything but normal, he knew. 

It took a lot of gut to yell at Voldemort, but that was definitely his mother’s voice. “Absolutely not! You can come into my house, but you do not get to take my son.” Draco, awoken by the commotion, rolled over to hear better. He could only hear one part of the conversation, but it was enough to get the gist. 

“You already have spies in that school, you do not need my son to be a part of it. Especially what you want him to do. He’s only a boy!” Draco was already not eating, scared, and he just wanted to sleep. He didn’t want to hear the screams if his mother was killed for back talking. He closed his eyes and waited, but it never came. 

The yelling was done now. Potter seemed to have woken up completely, and Draco could remember where he was. He could remember. Voldemort wasn’t downstairs. He wasn’t supposed to murder anyone. His mother was at home, in bed. 

He shook his head. Don’t think about her. 

Tonight, Draco didn’t even say anything to Potter as he lit the tip of his wand, pulled on the cloak that made him disappear, and stepped out of the room. 

It took four nights for the nightmares to  _ really _ piss Draco off. His waking hours were routine. Classes, meals, loitering outside under trees while he still could or in the library (because Potter was always alone in their room, finally under the excuse of homework), but his evenings were less stable. He was losing sleep. As if rooming with Potter in the first place wasn’t annoying enough.

He did… have some sleeping potions brewing in his trunk. His cloths were unpacked, tucked away in the dresser between their beds that Potter seemed to avoid using. In the trunk, he had a second cauldron (he saved his first for potions class), a bunch of potion supplies, and several large vials. He’d gotten enough supplies to make standard sleeping draughts for a year. If he were to give Potter some sleeping draught - in theory, that is - he would last only half a year. He could always get more, though, and if Potter kept waking him up anyway, they were just being wasted. 

So, that would solve his problem. Just give him some sleeping draught - he had two full vials, so it wouldn’t even be that hard to do - and then Draco could sleep. 

Friday night, when Potter came into the room, wearing fuzzy black pajama pants and a thin tank top, Draco made his move. He’d been woken up four nights in a row, and it was a hassle. Vial in his hands, he approached Potter, standing behind the Gryffindor as he shoved his clothes messily into his trunk. “Potter,” Draco said as he stood. 

Potter jumped. “Bloody hell! Are you trying to give me a heart attack?” 

“Take this,” Draco said, pressing the large container of cool, purple liquid into his hand. Potter’s fingers wrapped around the neck of the bottle, and their fingers touched as Draco let go of it. 

This was the closest Draco could remember being to Potter. The first realization Draco had, seeing him up close, was that he was taller than Potter. It was a mere couple centimeters, but he was taller! Potter’s glasses had a couple drops of water on them that had fallen off of his wet, post-shower hair. Through the lens, Draco could see his eyes squint in confusion and suspicion.

“What’s this?”

“It’s a sleeping draught. Surely you’ve seen a sleeping draught before, Potter.”

“Why?”

“Why do you think?”

The answer hung in the air between them, obvious yet unspoken. They both knew, and Potter knew that Draco knew. The nightmares. The screaming. They both knew, but neither opened their mouths to say it outloud. 

“Did you… Did you make this for me?” Potter asked. 

Draco rolled his eyes. Of course he hadn’t. This whole affair was for Draco’s sake, not Potter’s, even if Potter benefitted from it. “Don’t flatter yourself, Potter. I made too much, and you might as well use it. It’ll expire, which is just a waste of time and resources.”

Half of that was true. He hadn’t made it with Potter in mind. It would expire. That was the truth. Yet, if it hadn’t gone to Potter, Draco would have used it long before it expired. The flobberworm mucus in sleeping draughts, one of the main ingredients that caused the effects of sleeping draughts, could last for years before going bad. This particular potion, a standard draught, had a shelf life of at least three years. Not to mention, he hadn’t made too much. Potter, luckily, looked through these white lies, if he caught them. He didn’t pay enough attention in potions to know the shelf life of a common draught anyway. 

“So you,” he began, “use sleeping potions? Do you have nightmares, too?”

Draco took a step away from him. “Yeah, something like that.”

“But why do you go through the trouble of making your own? Why don’t you just as Madam Pomfrey?” 

“Why don’t you?” When Potter didn’t respond, Draco changed the subject. “Anyway, I’m going to bed.” He didn’t know why he decided to announce this other than that the conversation needed closure, and that’s the kind of thing roommates said, right? 

Draco crawled into bed, and he heard Potter open the container. He heard liquid swish. He heard the bottle close. Darkness engulfed them, and Draco couldn’t see the stone wall anymore. 

He didn’t wake up until the morning.

Draco’s eyes opened when the sun was already high in the sky and the birds had already finished singing. It was a Saturday morning, but Draco was no stranger to sleeping in. Over the summer, he’d gone to bed early and slept in late. Trying to keep a normal routine was harder at home than at school. His father was in Azkaban and his mother, well, back then she had been nothing but a ball of worry. Draco got it - she was going to trial and so was her son - but she got quiet and distant. Now, some of that anxiety was eased, since Draco had gotten off on all his charges, but she still had a trial. Eventually. They hadn’t been informed when, but she definitely would be tried, for many of the same charges as Draco, and she couldn’t slip away under the ruse of being a minor…

Potter was gone from their room, leaving his bed a wild tangle of sheets and covers.

After the slow process of getting ready, Draco made his way down to the common room. The clock told him it was past eleven in the morning. Quidditch tryouts were today, he remembered. Longingly, Draco thought about the broomstick under his bed. It was sent in on Wednesday morning, with a letter from his mom saying that she knew he would do great this season. 

Like he was going to play. She bought him a new broomstick and she thought he was going to play.

He wasn’t going to break his mother’s heart again and tell her he wasn’t. He desperately wanted to; Quidditch was the only thing he’d ever seriously wanted to do. Maybe he wasn’t the best, but he worked hard and was passionate about the game. That didn’t change the fact that no one would want him on their team. He wasn’t going to tell her that. 

Back to the room it was, to get his broom. He wasn’t going to play, but he could still fly. Breakfast, lunch, brunch, whatever you want to call it at eleven o’clock, be damned. Draco would rather be on his broom, a hundred meters off the ground, staring at the expansion of the grounds, than eating, anyway. 

Indeed, it was breathtaking. For once, he could appreciate it, since there was no snitch to search for. The leaves were just beginning to turn into a warm rainbow of yellow and red and orange and brown. Despite this, it was still warm enough for him to be less than chilly in just trousers and a white shirt. He flew high up above the castle, and he could see how endless the Forbidden Forest truly was. The tips of the towers reached up and pierced the sky. Beyond the castle, he could see the squid poke a tentacle out of the lake, and between the lake and forest, he could see the Quidditch pitch. 

Even from here, Draco spotted the little, red dots, zooming around on their broomsticks. Experimentally, he urged his broomstick closer, trying to catch a better sight of the players. 

He touched down on the stands, landing softly on his feet and picking up his broomstick. (It hadn’t always been this fluid - he’d spent the whole summer practicing it a couple years ago.) At the edge of the bleachers, hoping no one would see him. Few people were watching tryouts. Granger perched on one seat, but she was more interested in the parchment her quill ran along. A couple other kids Draco wasn’t familiar with watched. He found Potter watching carefully, but not from the bleachers, from the air, on his broom. He was the captain, after all. 

Draco, standing like a statue at the back of the bleachers, became fixated. Potter told one of the younger kids to be more stable on when they caught the quaffle. The lineup for the year was already half chosen before the season started. Potter was playing seeker, obviously, and he was captain. His girlfriend would be a chaser. Weasley would likely be a keeper. Not a bad lineup, but still. Expected. Potter watched intently, as an animal stalking its prey might. He critiqued form. Eventually, he just let them play and watched, as he would any normal game (without a snitch). 

Whilst watching, he saw Draco standing, watching. Who knew what was going through Potter’s head? Maybe he thought Draco was trying to scout out the new players, spy for Slytherin. He should probably leave. But, surely Potter was smarter than that and knew he wouldn’t be playing. Potter had to have picked up on the way people shunned Draco, right? So what reason would he have to scout out the Gryffindor players. 

Apparently, that wasn’t what was going through his head, because he smiled.

Surprising even himself, Draco smiled back. When was the last time he had smiled what wasn’t forced or a condescending smirk?

Did the sleeping potion thing mean that they were on good terms now? Could one little potion erase years of bad treatment? But that hadn’t been Draco’s intentions in giving him that potion. Draco didn’t care whether Potter wanted to be his friend or if he wanted to murder him in his sleep. Hell, if he tried, he was Harry Potter, killing a Death Eater, and would probably get away with it, too. No, Draco didn’t care about Potter or what Potter thought. He wanted to sleep, and Potter could take it how he would. 

So why, then, had he smiled back? 

Granger, on the bleachers a couple rows ahead and a bit over, saw Potter smile, at, what it would have seemed to her, an empty bleacher stand. She looked back, and caught Draco’s eye, who let the smile drop from his lips and rolled his eyes. Granger looked surprised. Potter had gone back to spectating his potential teammates, so he didn’t see Draco start to mount his broomstick. 

Commotion kept Draco from completing the task. Several students shouted out. In the time that Potter had taken to smile at Draco, some clueless second year who had probably never played Quidditch in his life had swung a bat and the bludger slammed into Weasley’s sternum. He was knocked off of his broom, and Potter sent a quick spell to catch him from slamming into the ground. 

The younger Weasley girl dived towards the ground, where Potter’s spell softly deposited him in the sand. Potter, too, went to see if he was okay. Several other Gryffindors, including the second year, who was yelling apologies and seemed hysterical, joined them. 

There was talking that Draco couldn’t hear, and Granger had disappeared down the bleacher steps to join them. He could figure out basically what was going on down there. Potter made the others back away. Granger took Weasley and they began to hobble off the pitch. Potter made a move to go after them, but Weasley said something to him, along the lines of, “No, I’m okay, finish tryouts,” or something. Weaslette comforted the kid who’d swung the bludger. 

Tryouts lasted another fifteen minutes, filling the whole time slot it was supposed to, instead of Potter ending it early. Draco didn’t leave. He should have, and he had no reason to stay, but he did. Maybe he could fly a couple laps around the pitch before the Hufflepuff team got there to tryout. That, he told himself, was the reason. 

Potter called everyone into a group and said something. The group dispersed. Potter and his girlfriend talked. Draco silently prayed they’d leave before he reached the pitch. 

He disappeared downstairs and when he poked his head onto the pitch from behind the curtain, Weasley was gone, and only Potter remained. He was dusting sand off the end of his broom and looked upset. 

“Malfoy!” he called out when he looked up. Draco cocked his head to the side. Potter jogged over, and they were side by side, just like like the previous night, when Draco pushed that potion into Potter’s hands. 

“Potter,” Draco said. 

“I never thanked you for that potion. It helps a lot. Last time was the first time I haven’t… in months.”

Draco was taken aback. This potion thing must have flipped some switch in Potter’s mind. He’d even thrown a smile into that, which was two more smiles in one day than Potter had given him in his whole life. One potion and they were besties now. Great. Draco couldn’t care less, but… 

“It’s no problem, really, Potter, stop.”

They’d started walking, since they started talking. Potter had been going to the broom cupboard to store his broom. Draco leaned against the doorframe of the shed as Potter hung his broom on a hook and gave it one more brushing to get any microscopic dust off of it. 

“Do you think,” Potter began as he turned around, yanking off his Quidditch gloves and stuffing them in his red robe, “that when I run out, you might be able to make me some more. Since, you, you know, make yourself some anyway?”

Contemplating for a second, Draco answered, “I guess so,” with a shrug. “Don’t get any ideas that I’m doing this for you, though, Potter. I just want to sleep.”

Potter looked as if he’d expected Draco to decline. “Thank you.” 

He walked out the shed, and Draco found himself following. It was too late for a couple laps, since the Hufflepuffs were already on the sand, the captain shouting while the players listened and stretched. They strode in silence until they were away from the pitch, up the hill, inside the castle. Draco was going back to the the eighth year dorms now, to put away his broom and get lunch. Potter was going to the infirmary to check on Weasley. No words were exchanged, but Draco assumed that was where he was headed. 

Neither said a word as they went their separate ways.

His stomach rumbled loudly in the empty corridor.

Draco was fast on his feet to the dorm and back. Flying was shockingly taxing on the body, and always made him hungry. Combine that with skipping breakfast, and you got one starving Slytherin. With the broom tucked safely under his mattress and boxspring, he nearly sprinted downstairs. 

He missed pancakes for breakfast, but he sure as hell wasn’t missing ravioli, too.  

Being the first one in the dining hall, he chose a seat at the end of the table, where he usually sat. He had to wait a couple minutes for the house elves to finish cooking lunch but as he sat down, his mother’s owl, an eagle owl like his own, swooped down and dropped a rolled up parchment piece in front of him. He gently stroked her feathers. She seemed disappointed when he didn’t have any food for him. She was probably starving; she had a flight from the French countryside and didn’t get any of his breakfast since he’d slept in. 

“Next time, sorry,” he cooed to the owl. She shook her feathers and took off. 

Letters from his mother were both frequent and infrequent. She had little to do at home, so she wrote to him often. Yet, she had a lot going on, mentally, between worry about her trial and about Draco and simply memories of the war, of Voldemort, so letters weren’t as often as they’d been in the past.

He hadn’t communicated with her since he’d boarded the Hogwarts Express. Then, she’d anxiously awaited her trial date. She had been to find out shortly after Draco returned to school. Was this what the letter was about?

As he unfurled the parchment, it seemed not.

It began with her typical motherly ramblings. How was school? The classes? Had he done anything interesting? Had Quidditch started? Was he excited to play? How were the teachers? Who was he hanging out with, since his main friends had decided to not return, or couldn’t? She sounded like any mother checking on her son while he was away at school. 

Then, it got more. Not anything more in particular, really, just more. That was how Draco saw it, anyway.

She  _ had _ found out her trial date. It was to be November fifth. That was almost exactly two months away, as it was the sixth of September. 

_ Draco, my love, _ it read,  _ please do not worry. I debated telling you so soon, when it’s still so far away, but you deserve to know. If something does happen, it will be okay, I promise. _

Bullshit. Utter bullshit. Draco was close to crumpling the parchment right then and there, because that was bullshit. There was no if about this situation. She was facing the same charges as Draco did, including assisting a criminal, conspiracy to commit murder, and more. Had Draco been found guilty, he would be in Azkaban for years. Not a lifetime sentence, as he never killed anyone, but long enough that it might have killed him anyway. His mother was not a minor. His mother was an adult that the Ministry would hold accountable. As much as Draco hated to be perceived as a young, stupid, child, he had been a minor when he became a Death Eater, without much of a choice, too. His mother had the choice; his mother was an adult. There was no if about whether she would be sent to the worst prison on the planet.

And, when she was sent, it would not be “okay.” Draco carried an indifference, an apathy, about him, and while most people were just background noise to him, his mother was not one of those people. 

_ I love you, Draco. Please write back soon. _

Plates of bread and ravioli appeared on the table in front of him, but Draco had lost his appetite. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for continuing to read! I hope you enjoyed it so far!
> 
> Comments, kudos, and bookmarks are super appreciated! Thank you to everyone who has done so!


	3. Three - Harry

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's a lot Harry never asked for in his life, like fame, or to be the 'Chosen One,' or to cause a lot of people pain, or a stupid chocolate frog card the had virtually no meaning or value anyway. Some of those things, you just can't un-get, even if you never asked for them. But maybe, you can.

 “Harry, look!” Ron shouted over a plate of donuts, shoving a stack of paper into his hands. It was the Daily Prophet. “You’re on the cover.”

Indeed, Harry’s face was right on the front, a moving portrait. The headline was the announcement that Harry Potter, “War Hero,” was to get a chocolate frog card in his honor. Neville had been saying for years that it was only a matter of time before Harry got his own card. Neville was right after all. 

“Wow! Harry, this is big news! Good job!” Hermione hooted, leaning over to read the words in the cover article. “‘Harry Potter’s lifelong sacrifices in the fight against You-Know-Who and his followers has prompted a chocolate frog card in his honor. As many readers are aware, chocolate frog cards present some of the best wizards and witches the world has ever seen... When the reporters at the Daily Prophet spoke to the committee of chocolate frog card makers, their president said that a Harry Potter card was long overdue.’” 

“Well, yeah, Harry’s been a hero since he was, like, born,” Ginny said. “ _ I _ would have  _ loved _ a Harry Potter card when I was ten!” She laughed, red hair swinging behind her as she threw her head back.

As beautiful as her laugh was, Harry couldn’t find it in himself to laugh with her, or even to be amused in the slightest that he’d be on a card. How was it that the world kept seeing him as this perfect being, this war hero? To be a hero, one had to choose heroism; Harry most certainly did not. He made decisions for the greater good, but would he have had he not been The Chosen One? The way he was portrayed, treated - by his friends, the media,  _ everyone _ \- it was as if he were a God among men. Though no one else could see or acknowledge it, he was deeply flawed. So many had gotten hurt in his name. His parents were dead because of him. Sirius, Remus, Tonks,  _ gone _ . Colin Creevey, who may have been annoying but looked up to Harry. Cedric was dead. Dobby, who was a little elf who fought in a war that wasn’t his to fight. Even his best friend’s brother. That was only the beginning of those who had died because of Harry Potter. How could he be a hero when all he’d done was cause destruction?

He rifled through the Daily Prophet to see what else was new, maybe change the subject. As he took a bite of a pastry, but found nothing of interest; he didn’t even make it to the last page.

Harry gave Ron back his newspaper before standing up. “I’ll see you guys in class,” he announced. “I told Hagrid I would go see him before school starts.” He and Ginny shared a chaste kiss before he left the dining hall.

This was the third time he’d gone to see Hagrid, despite it being only the second Monday of the year, only the sixth day of classes. Seeing Hagrid in classes - back where he deserved to be, as the Care of Magical Creatures teacher - was nice, but they never really got a chance to talk. And Hagrid… Hagrid was easy to talk to. He never judged Harry, and let him talk about whatever, and gave him advice. Hagrid was the closest thing Harry had to a father figure.

When Harry arrived, Hagrid was outside, and he greeted him with a smile. “Good morning!” he said. Harry smiled back and replied with an echo of the words. “You read the Daily Prophet yet?”

“Yeah,” Harry answered. 

“Good job, Harry! You’re right up there with all the best, like Dumbledore. What’s wrong? You don’t seem very excited.”

Little response was elicited, just a half-hearted shrug. “I don’t really want to talk about it.” This chocolate frog card business was too much. Sure, it was an honor, but he didn’t deserve it, really. He wasn’t anyone like Dumbledore, he hadn’t done anything on his own merit. Even on the way here, two people had stopped to congratulate him. It was a bother. 

“What else is going on?”

“Well,” Harry started, happy to change the subject, “Quidditch tryouts were this weekend.”

The two talked until the school bell rung, signalling to students and teachers that class began in five minutes. Harry said his goodbyes and ran to the dorm, grabbing his stuff. He tried to get to potions, but sped into the room three minutes late. Eyes turned on him as he pushed open the dungeon doors. Slughorn was at the front of the room, reading off a parchment, interrupted by the sudden distraction. Harry’s eyes met Malfoy’s. They met Ron’s. They met some girl’s, some seventh year’s, who shifted to hide a flask. 

Harry silently took a seat. 

Ron passed him a note under the desk.  _ Why were you late? _

_ Got caught up at Hagrid’s _ , Harry scribbled back.

_ Next time you go see him, can I join? _ Ron wrote. As he was about the push the parchment over, he pulled it back and added,  _ I haven’t seen him in a while _ .

Harry wrote back a smiley face.  _ Of course! _

They fumbled their way through class, sloppily making their potion, which turned out “Not quite right, boys,” as dubbed by Slughorn. Regardless, they got a passing grade, so what  _ really _ mattered? 

In front of the door to their next class, the two friends waited, chatting aimlessly. Hermione had caught up with them, books piled as high as ever. Harry and Hermione laughed at a wisecrack Ron made, Hermione’s hair bouncing. 

(Luna had been teaching her how to braid hair. Pro tip about frizzy hair: it’s significantly easier to managed when the tendrils are tucked nicely into a plait. Warning: it’s  _ even wilder _ when it’s taken out.)

Malfoy rushed through the hallway, grappling a book in his right hand as he shoved his way between people. He held it down at his side, as opposed to how Harry or Hermione or Ron did, held up against their chests. Over Ron’s shoulder, Harry watched a fourth year Ravenclaw stick out her foot, tripping Malfoy. He didn’t fall, didn’t even lose grip on his things, but he definitely stumbled. 

“What is it, Harry?” Hermione pondered, noticing Harry ignoring the conversation and watching Malfoy tell a kid to “bugger off.” 

“That girl,” Harry said, Ron and Hermione listening intently, “just tripped Malfoy.”

“That’s just karma, if you ask me,” Ron said. “Mate, after  _ everything _ he’s done to you, to ‘Mione, to me, to everyone else, it’s really just what goes around comes around.”

Hermione looked as if she were about to disagree, but closed her mouth again. “He  _ has _ done some terrible things, even putting the war aside. Not that I think anyone should be hurting him on purpose, but…” She shrugged. 

“You’re the one who punched him in the face!” Ron countered. 

“Yes, but-”

Harry had toned them out, watching the girl and Malfoy go back and forth, before Malfoy finally turned his back on her, stomping away. His two best friends were absolutely right. Malfoy had treated him, all of them, like shit. He called Hermione slurs and looked down on Ron because he wasn’t as rich. He was condescending and a bully. All that, those years of hatred, seemed to blur with what Harry felt now, a little bit of tolerance for him. He had saved Harry’s life and brewed sleeping potions for Harry when he didn’t want to go to the infirmary for them (there were so many others who needed them more than Harry). Harry had known some who had changed for the worse, but could Malfoy be changing for the better?

“I can’t help but find it ironic,” Hermione was saying when Harry tuned back in, “that all the professors stand on their soapboxes and preach about how house unity, how it’s the only thing that’ll make things better, and then turn their backs to the way that the Slytherins are being treated! Even if Malfoy is a terrible person, which we can all agree on, he doesn’t deserve to be picked on for something he didn’t choose, like his house.”

“People aren’t picking on him because he’s in Slytherin, they’re picking on him because he’s a git. Even if I’m not going out of my way to confront him, if he picked a fight, I wouldn’t hesitate to stand up to him. He’s picked on my girlfriend and my best mate and my little sister, some of the most important people to me, I can’t let that slide. Not to mention, he  _ constantly _ picked on people for things they didn’t choose - like me for my family’s money issues or you for your blood status - and I really don’t see why you’re this upset. Back me up, Harry.”

Something, who knows what, compelled Harry to say, “I actually kind of agree with her on this. Even if he has been a prick, maybe he… isn’t, anymore. And, even if he is, if we pick on him or let it slide, we’re just stooping to his level.”

“I suppose,” Ron admitted, but didn’t look fully convinced. 

If he needed more convincing, it would not come yet, because the bell rang and their conversation was discarded due to their incoming class period. 

After their classes drew to a close, the trio spent their afternoon in the eighth year common room. Over the last week, it had grown on Harry, more than he thought it would. It was certainly different to be grouped with others his age rather than by house; everyone lounging around the living area were all adults like him, not young kids who were ignorant to the world and its woes. Though it wasn’t the Gryffindor common room, it wasn’t the worst place, either. 

The three crowded around a coffee table, flipping through textbooks, taking notes, and writing essays. There were a hundred other things they could have been doing, but Hermione, more now than ever, imposed the belief that school was what mattered most.

“Ron, come on,” she scolded, sounding like his mother, when Ron tried to get out of doing homework. “There’s not big threats. There’s nothing to worry about anymore. We can finally work towards something like school because we don’t have to focus on basilisks or horcruxes or how to keep Harry from getting killed. Besides, we didn’t come back to school to slack off, we came to  _ learn _ .”

Why  _ had _ Harry come back? 

He’d wanted to be an auror for ages, but it seemed less appealing now. Harry still wanted to help people, but he had had enough of that scene for a hundred lifetimes. It seemed… tiring. Though, if he decided not to be an auror, what would he do? He could probably get pretty far lounging on his parents’ money and his fame, but he refused to sink that low. So…

At this point, really, Harry was just winging it.

Maybe, he thought absentmindedly, he could play Quidditch or something.

“Hey, ‘Mione, can you help me with this?” he asked, in regards to a potions question. He had  _ not _ been paying attention, or if he had heard, he had forgotten. Potions were… not his thing. He could go his entire adult life and never make a potion, thank you very much.

“Hmm…” she hummed, reading the question. “I don’t remember going over that one in class.” She busied herself in the textbook, now set on a path to find the answer, unrelentless as a coursing river. 

As their study session drew into the evening, with a break only for dinner, Hermione retired to her room. Ron challenged Harry to a game of chess, but Harry declined. “Not tonight,” Harry said. “I’m exhausted. I want to get some rest.”

Ron leaned in over the coffee table, hushing his voice.

“About that, Harry, how are your… you know, nightmares, especially rooming with  _ Malfoy _ and all? If he gives you any shit about them-”

Harry quickly shook his head. “They’re… getting better.”

And they really were. Every night, he’d taken the sleeping draught offered up by Malfoy, and all weekend, he had yet to have a nightmare. The exhaustion didn’t go away - maybe it would never go away, only time would tell - because a lot of it was mental, not just the physical sleep. But being able to make it through the night… it did wonders. He hadn’t slept so well in months.

It was comforting, almost, to share a room with Malfoy. Not that he would admit that to Ron, of course, and it wasn’t as if he even  _ liked _ Malfoy. The guy was still a prick, and as they’d mentioned earlier, however he was now didn’t undo all the shit he pulled in his younger years. Regardless, it was a comfort to have that potion, something Ron or even Hermione might not have in the future - and certainly hadn’t in the past - made for him. Not that they didn’t care, but Ron was like Harry, not a potions guy, and Hermione had a lot going on and Harry didn’t want to force her into it. The fact that Malfoy had done it on his own free will, no asking or pressuring, even if it was technically for his own gain, was a comfort. Plus, it did help that instinctual feeling that Malfoy was up to something or untrustworthy, sleeping in the same room. (Hermione had told him last week that sleeping with someone - no, Ron,  _ not _ like that, you scoundrel - betters your terms with someone; it’s some biological thing where if they  _ don’t _ kill you in your sleep, you’re more apt to trust them in the future.)

“That’s good. And if he says anything…”

Harry smiled a real, genuine smile. “I know,” he said, knees popping as he stood. “And,” he decided to add as an afterthought, “thank you.” 

Harry crept up the staircase, papers in hand, and pushed open the door to their room. Malfoy was sitting on the bed, Daily Prophet in hand. Harry tried to ignore the blush that crept to his face because, oh, Malfoy must be looking at  _ that _ article, the chocolate frog one, because that was the only one people seemed to be looking at. He dumped the papers with his other school supplies, reaching for a shirt from his trunk so he could finally discard his school outfit for something more comfortable. 

Shirt in hand, he stood up and turned around, only to have a stack of papers shoved in his chest.  _ Damn _ , Malfoy really ought to stop sneaking up on him! Honestly, if Hermione was right about the trust thing, then for every bit of trust he supposedly gained from sharing a room with Malfoy, he lost it when he kept scaring the living daylights out of him.

“What the  _ fuck _ is  _ this, _ Potter?” Malfoy said, loud and angry. “This is  _ all _ I’ve heard  _ all _ day. I don’t  _ care _ about your stupid chocolate frog card.”

“Listen, Malfoy,” Harry said, taking up that snarky tone. “I didn’t  _ want _ this card, and I didn’t  _ ask _ for it, either.”

“When will you - and the rest of the world - get it through your heads that, even if you were the ‘Chosen One,’ that doesn’t mean you were the only one who fought in this war? Everyone thinks you’re some sort of war hero, some sort of savior, some sort of  _ god _ , but there are plenty of people who helped in this war just as much as you, but instead of getting chocolate frog cards, they get prison sentences.” Malfoy pulled back the newspaper, fingers shaking and getting caught as he flipped through the pages, all the way to the last page. “Do you see this? I would bet you didn’t even  _ know _ about this. My mother, who  _ saved your ass _ , is going to court. If she loses, she gets a lifetime in Azkaban. And even though she never supported Voldemort and saved your life, no one’s going to believe her because there’s only one person not in jail who would testify on her behalf, and it’s her fuck up Death Eater son who  _ of course _ they’re not going to believe.”

“Malfoy,” Harry said, voice softer this time but still firm. He looked at the page, and, yes, Narcissa Malfoy was going to be tried in court, under the same counts as her husband, who had been sent to Azkaban, too. 

“Even if you didn’t choose to get a chocolate frog card, what have you done for the others? You mope around this dorm, but when have you done anything about people like my mother, who helped you, and in return they get their lives stripped from them?” A silence lulled between them, before Malfoy continued. “My father has been taken away from me. He wasn’t near perfect, but which is worse, Potter, having shitty parents who love you or having no parents at all? If my mom gets sent to Azkaban…” Malfoy trailed off. 

Harry opened his mouth to sputter out something, anything, but was quickly shut down. 

“I don’t want your excuses, Potter.” Apparently, Malfoy had shown enough vulnerability, so he roughly shoved the paper at Harry’s chest, nearly making him stumble, straightened his posture into his typical high-and-mighty stance, and turned on his heel to open the dresser and retrieve silky night clothes. No more words were exchanged that evening. 

After months and months of being told how amazing he was, what a hero he was, and wanting to tell them how wrong they were, someone had finally told him the truth; he wasn’t a perfect media hero to look up to - he was just some kid who made a bunch of mistakes but tried his best. Malfoy hadn’t even gone that far to flatter him. When he was moping and feeling down and trying to forget the war, he had forgotten that everyone else was, too. After all the destruction he knew he had caused, what  _ was _ he doing to fix it? Not enough, in Malfoy’s eyes.

Maybe Malfoy was right. He was Harry Potter. He never asked to be famous, but he may as well use his privilege for good, right? Even if he couldn’t ease his own suffering, the least he could do to apologize for what he’d done was to ease someone else’s.

Malfoy turned to go to the bathroom, and while he was gone, Harry ripped out the article about Malfoy’s mother. He threw the rest of the newspaper, including that terrible cover photo, away. 

Harry couldn’t forget that date, that date of the trial. November fifth. 

Malfoy’s words echoed in his mind.  _ What have you done for the others? _

Ginny, at breakfast, proposed that they hang out, the two of them, before Quidditch started. Harry had decided the team, with Ginny’s assistance, so practices could commence, and they had the pitch for that afternoon, an hour after school ended. “We could walk around,” the redhead suggested, fingers gently brushing his fingers. 

“Sorry, Gin,” he said, pulling his hand back. “Not today. I have something I want to do.”

She pouted, but in a playful way; she wasn’t upset. Harry sometimes needed space. 

Relationships, dating, flirting, people you like, it could be… crushing. No pun intended. Harry sometimes felt suffocated enough as it was. Usually Ron and Hermione were pretty safe bets to be okay, and usually Ginny, but since they began dating, it felt… different. Harry was relatively new to the dating scene. There was Ginny, clearly, and a handful of crushes on boys and girls before her, but never had he dated any of them. The weight of a relationship was different than that of a friendship. In a friendship, you were just there, but as a boyfriend, there were  _ expectations _ that you just didn’t have platonically. Taking your partner on dates, kissing, and holding hands were some of them. The notion just changed. He and Ginny had been friends for years, and now, it was different. He liked Ginny, yes, she was attractive and strong and smart and there was definitely romantic intentions there, but when he pictured love, it didn’t feel like this. 

That wasn’t why he didn’t want to hang out with her though. 

After school, he hoisted his broom from the shed and mounted it, flying into the air, away from people. He hovered in the sky and he pulled the crumpled and creased parchment from out of his pocket. The article. He wanted to read through it, all of it.

The title read, “Azkaban For Malfoy?” There was a picture of Narcissa, sitting on stone, eyes downcast. When she looked up, her eyes had bags and her hair looked like straw. In the moving photograph, he was Malfoy move into the picture, throw his arms around her. They looked forlorn.

_ The trial date for Narcissa Malfoy has just been released by the Ministry of Magic, under their policy of government transparency - which is founded by the belief that wizards and witches should know when and in what ways their government is running - for the fifth of November.  _

_ Several months ago, her husband, Lucius Malfoy, and her son, Draco Malfoy, were both tried. Her trial was postponed because she is thought to be less severe than some of those who were tried urgently, such as the aforementioned Malfoys. Lucius was tried under several charges, including murder and use of Unforgivable curses, and was found guilty; he was sentenced to a life in Azkaban. Draco Malfoy was tried under charges including conspiracy to commit murder, but was found innocent due to being a minor at the time he joined the Death Eaters and claimed he, “was forced to, unless he wanted to see his family and friends killed by Voldemort.” He had now returned to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry to complete his education. _

Harry didn’t know that.

_ If Narcissa Malfoy is found guilty, she will be facing the same sentence as her husband, a life in Azkaban. Unless a reliable witness steps up - which the Minister of Magic claims is “unlikely” for this type of case - she will be charged in full. _

_ “She is not guilty, yet,” said one of the Ministry members, who requested to remain unnamed. “But many believe she is. She was a host to the Dark Lord himself, and even if her son escaped charges, she is an adult and will be treated like one.” _

_ The Ministry includes these trials to be a part of their reform of the wizarding world, post-war. Their desire for the magical community is a safe environment where rogue and dangerous wizards or witches are on the loose. The auror department had been working incredibly hard recently to fulfill this wish, including rapidly tracking down, questioning, and if there is any doubt, trying wizards and witches on their, to use a muggle term, “black list.” For any questions regarding the trial of Mrs. Malfoy or any other Death Eater or rogue wizard, please send an owl to the Ministry of Magic. _

She had saved Harry’s life.

Harry crumpled the paper up and shoved it back in his pocket. He needed to fly and to think. He knew what he had to do. He knew. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! This chapter took longer than I intended to write, but now that it's up, I hope you enjoy. As always, feedback, kudos, and bookmarks never fail to put a smile on my face.


	4. Four - Draco

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Time keeps pushing like a river. Autumn is in fall swing, with Halloween and Narcissa's trial. Draco is being worn down, but he keeps fighting. All he knows is that he is becoming more and more on edge...

They, Draco and Potter, hardly exchanged words after Draco had called him out. Save for the fresh supply of sleeping draught, when they were silent through anyway, the two never acknowledged each other.

Draco hoped, maybe, that he had made Potter feel guilty. It was incredibly infuriating to see the world worship Potter, who hadn’t chosen to be part of the war, but cast aside those who chose for themselves which side to fight on. Draco’s mother would be imprisoned, and no one could stop it. She had saved Potter’s life, and in exchange, she got her life and happiness stripped from her, torn from her bones. Draco had always found something about Potter to be upset about, petty little issues, but this… He had every right to be furious.

So they ignored each other. That wasn’t to say that they didn’t ignore each other usually, since they rarely spoke, but now, it was just more silence.

Draco didn’t particularly mind this, because he had little he wanted to say to Potter. He was content on his own.

Halloween was spent alone. He enjoyed a feast, the pumpkin pastries and the autumn foods, but as soon as the meal was done, he booked it outside. 

The world around him was becoming colder, both literally and symbolically. As fall wrapped around the corner, Hogsmeade visits would begin, and Christmas was fast approaching, the leaves turned a beautiful array or red and orange and yellow and brown, like a bonfire, or perhaps, the opposite of a bonfire, as it got chillier. His mother’s trial was in five days - a Sunday - and Draco was rapidly losing what little hope he had in the first place. 

As he marched towards the lapping shoreline of the Great Lake, he tugged his cloak tightly around himself. Near the water, in the dry sand, he sat, tucking his legs to his chest to avoid soaking his shoes and letting his chin rest on his knees. He stared out into the darkness, illuminated only by the reflection of the moon on the crystal liquid. 

He could only imagine what his mother was feeling right now.

He couldn’t imagine it was much superior to how he felt leading up to his trial. A mixture of fear, anguish, and regret, using apathy to cope. 

The difference is that his mom had done so many good things for the war, she  _ saved Harry Potter’s life _ . Draco, alternatively, was much more active in the side of dark magic; though never completing his assigned task, he still tried, he was still about to, if only he’d been braver. Even if Draco had saved Potter’s life, Draco had done so many other terrible things to him.

If he was sent to Azkaban, Draco knew, it was what he deserved.

His mother? She didn’t deserve that. 

The tide pushed up onto the sad, unsettling it, and as the sand settled, he eased himself to do the same. 

A bottle of firewhiskey would be really nice, right then, he decided. Unfortunately, he didn’t have any at the moment. When he went to Hogsmeade he ought to buy a bottle. Or two or three, just to stock up. Wind blew in a hard gust, and that sizzling drink would have been  _ great _ . 

He snapped his head around as he heard voices, loud and clear. Potter and Weasley, his girlfriend. They were coming down the hill, hands linked, arms swinging, laughing obnoxiously. They directed themselves a ways to Draco’s right, finding a huge boulder that started in the sand and went out into the water. They mounted it, sitting on the end and letting their legs hang over the lake. Potter put an arm around her waist.

In his earlier years of schooling, Draco and his friends used to jump off of and push each other into the lake on that big rock. It went out far enough that, when you reached the water, even with the momentum from jumping, your feet couldn’t touch the bottom. It scared Draco - it scared him a lot - but he always pretended it didn’t.

The two on it now had quieted their voices, talking softly. Draco couldn’t make out distinct words, but he did hear the flow of voices. They were cut off as he watched the ginger lean in and kiss Potter.

Draco, oddly enough, didn’t look away. He should have. He should have gotten up and left but he just watched Potter kiss her back. His hand around her waist pulled her closer and his free one cupped her cheek, and something about their kiss made Draco so very upset. Perhaps it, like sitting alone in that field at the beginning of the school year - two months ago! Time went by so fast - was just a reminder that Draco was alone. Not just romantically, though that too, but he just had no one. No friends. No date. No family, soon to be so. 

As well, it was impossible not to notice they way Potter kissed - steady and strong and like he knew exactly what he wanted. Which, at the moment, seemed to be Ginny Weasley.

Draco was done here. He stood up, brushing any possible specks of dirt off of his outfit. When he glanced back, the couple was still kissing, and he sighed. 

He began to walk away, and as he did so, something compelled him to look back, just once more. Though the thought of seeing them kissing any more was unsettling, he couldn’t seem to  _ not _ look back.

They had broken off, the Weasley girl back to looking at the water. Their angles were sharper now, but while she faced away, it allowed for an easy glance at the castle on Potter’s end. Draco made eye contact with Potter. Like the past month, almost two, had gone, they said no words, took almost no acknowledgement in each other’s presence past mere eye contact.

So this was what Potter was doing instead of worrying about people like Draco’s mom.

He was sparked with both rage and jealousy. 

Potter looked back out at the water, and Draco continued his hike up to the castle.

When Potter returned to the room that night, Draco was already tucked into bed, facing the wall, rubbing circles on his pillow with his thumb. 

It was almost scary, how little they spoke. To Draco, it was definitely scary how little he spoke to anyone. 

His mother was the exception, her letters coming daily, rapidly, like a memoir of her life and their time together. She wrote about her life, her love of Draco; she told him that she wanted to get to say goodbye. She stopped pandering with the “It will be okay’s” because she knew it would not be. She told him she didn’t want to make the same mistake Lucius had and forget to say goodbye, to forget to remind Draco that, no matter what, she loved him.

In Draco’s opinion, he found it easier to avoid the other students at school. They detested him, and there was no point in making life harder on himself, though if someone else started it, he could show his attitude.

But a roommate? Shouldn’t one talk to their roommate? Potter and him had been on not good terms before the chocolate frog card incident, but at least tolerable ones. The silence? Something about it was so… it got under Draco’s skin like nothing else could. That had always been the thing about Harry Potter - he was like a snake filled with venom. For his whole life, Draco had wanted to be friends with Potter. Growing up, his father didn’t talk about Voldemort, and all Draco saw was how great the Potter boy would be,  _ was _ . The first day, when Potter tossed his hand aside, choosing that ginger and bookworm over Draco, he had been so  _ angry _ . 

So they kept their distances. Hours turned to days and time refused to relent. 

Draco Malfoy woke up early on the morning of the fifth. He hadn’t really gone to sleep, not for long. It was the day of the trial and Draco was going to fight and scratch and battle for his mother until he won. He had had enough of being a pushover; for Voldemort, all he’d done was give up and take orders and die a little on the inside, but not today. Even if there was no hope, even if his mother ended up in prison after all… what would that say about him if he didn’t even try.

Shacklebolt, along with a committee of other interrogators, listened to Draco’s mother, as he sat in the stands, her lone witness and defender. They laid out her charges, the punishment if she were found guilty, and she told her story…

Draco listened quietly, breathing softly, trying not to miss a word. The Ministry listened just as intently, on the edges of their seats. 

She started with how she and her husband had hosted Voldemort’s headquarters. “In the face of the Dark Lord, how can one say no? My husband may have been his supporter - all the more reason to say yes - but what choice did we have? If he said no, we would have been slaughtered mercilessly.”

She recounted his stay, those gruesome conversations including the one where she stood up to Voldemort when he requested Draco to kill Dumbledore. 

And then, the final battle rolled around. She went more into detail than she had ever with Draco. Draco was aware that she had saved Potter’s life, but he never knew details. Maybe she never wanted to relive that battle, but detail were what might save her. 

“No one wanted to see if Potter was dead. When Voldemort asked for someone to check, no one would step forward. I did. I thought - I thought he might know if my son was dead. I needed to know if Draco was alive, so I seized my opportunity. I leaned down and put my hand on his chest and I felt his heart beating hard and fast, anxious and pumped up on adrenaline and I leaned down. I pretended to hear if he was breathing, but I asked him, I said, ‘Is Draco alive?’ and he whispered back, ‘Yes.’ So Voldemort told me to get on with it - was he alive? - and I said “No, he’s not alive.’”

“Is that the end of your statement?” Shacklebolt asked as she paused.

“Yes, sir,” his mother nodded in response.

“Any other testimonies?” he asked, looking around at the room of people, including some reporters. That was Draco’s cue.

“Me,” he declared.

Standing in front of the Minister and his lackeys was possibly one of the scariest things he’d done. His mother’s life depended on what he said. He agreed with what she said about standing up to Voldemort, stating, “I joined him on my accords - that another story, we went over that during my trial - and my mother did her damnedest to stop me. I don’t believe for a minute that my mother supported Voldemort, not genuinely. She did what she did out of fear, and even then, she still did more against him than I ever did. She saved Harry Potter’s life, too, and if that doesn’t say she doesn’t support Voldemort, nothing does.”

One of the voices popped up from the crowd, asking, “Mr. Malfoy, do you have any evidence that she saved Harry Potter? Were you a witness? Or was that just what she told you?”

Oh, God. This was where they backed him into a corner. He wasn’t a witness. It was what she had told them. Just as he told Potter, they weren’t going to believe Narcissa’s fuck up Death Eater son, even if he was telling the truth. He tried to think quickly. He was a Slytherin, after all. Think, damn it!

He didn’t need to think, because the doors burst open and Harry Potter walked in, yelling, “I have evidence!”

It was as if out of a dream. Harry Potter was wearing a black shirt and a red flannel and jeans, normal weekend clothes, glasses perched on his nose, hair as wild as ever. The handle of his wand poked out of his pocket, and he looked as if he’d been running. The flash of reporters’ cameras doused him in white light, and Harry Potter, in that moment, was an angel.

“Mr. Potter,” Shacklebolt said, surprised as everyone else, “I wasn’t aware you would be joining us today. You have a testimony?”

“I do.”

“Then tell us what happened.”

So he did. He recounted it exactly as Narcissa had; Draco’s mother felt his heartbeat, asked about her son. When he said yes, she said he was dead “She saved my life,” Potter said. “I may have been the Chosen One, but I wasn’t the only one who fought in this war. If it wasn’t for her, I would be dead, and maybe so would everyone else in here.” Draco met Potter’s eyes. “Don’t send her to Azkaban; she doesn’t deserve it. There’s a lot of bad witches out there, and she’s not one of them. That’s all I have to say.”

The jury deliberated, and Draco rocked anxiously on his heals. No one was going to believe some Death Eater or her Death Eater son, that much Draco knew. But they would listen to Harry Potter, and when they announced her free of all charges, Draco was thankful. 

The cuffs linking his mother’s wrists vanished, and he threw himself into her arms. Not that he would admit, but he was tearing up a little. “I love you,” she said.

“I love you too,” Draco replied in all earnesty.

When they pulled apart, Harry Potter was gone.

It was not until that night that he saw Potter again. Draco spent the rest of the day with his mother. They got dinner together in Diagon Alley. Draco held her hand; he had not held her hand since he was five. When he finally was ready to go back to Hogwarts (“You’ve got class tomorrow, mister.” “But, mother-” “No buts.”) he kissed her on the cheek with a promise that he would write soon and see her for Christmas in less than two months. 

He pushed open the door to the dorm, and Potter was yanking off the flannel he was wearing that afternoon. His jeans were replaced with fuzzy lounge pants. 

“Oh, Malfoy,” he said, letting the plaid cover slip from his hands into the trunk. “You’re back.”

It was, really, such a stupid thing to say. Of course he was back. They had class in the morning, and it wasn’t as if Draco was just going to run off into the sunset with his mother. 

“Thank you,” Draco said, dropping any malice or hardness in his voice that may have been there. He was thankful, undeniable, totally, one hundred percent consumed with gratitude because  _ he still had his mother _ . 

Perhaps Potter, despite all the shit he’d given Draco over the years, the rejection of his friendship, which fucking  _ sucked _ , was not a terrible prick after all. 

Draco Malfoy was right; Harry Potter was going to tear him to shreds.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, two updates in just a couple days! Honestly... I have no clue how I did it. Thanks for reading and please send feedback/leave kudos if you want more!


	5. Five - Harry

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry's conflicting feelings about his relationship with Ginny began to wore him down, piece by piece, which was as confusing to Harry as it was to anyone else. His feelings about Draco were almost as strange and foreign to him.

Of course it was in newspapers. Not just the Daily Prophet, though don’t doubt for a second that the only cover page mention of Malfoy’s mom’s trial was when Harry showed up, but those trashy tabloid magazines, too, and your run of the mill paper. Apparently that “unexpected guest” “changed the course of the trial” in a “shocking turn of events.” If there was one thing he wanted more than anything, it was for the media to leave him alone.

His friends knew he was going to be gone, but they never asked where he was going, or why. Technically, as adults, they weren’t bound to the same campus rules as they had been as minors. That meant they didn’t need Hogsmeade permission slips signed and, yes, they could leave campus whenever, at their own expense. It wouldn’t have surprised his friends if he went to Diagon Alley because his potions kit was running low or to a Hogsmeade pub for a drink. Harry was still sorting through and dealing with, well,  _ everything _ , so they didn’t pester him. 

They did pester him Monday morning, the sixth of November, when the Daily Prophet showed him erupting into the courtroom, with the headline, “Potter Vouches for Death Eater in Trial.” 

What should have annoyed him the most was the fact that Malfoy’s mom wasn’t even mentioned in the headline; it was her trial. In reality, it just bothered him that something he’d done to help someone and to be honest and to amend his rocky road with Malfoy was turned into another publicity scandal.

“Harry,” Ginny said, touching Harry’s hand, “you could have told us.”

“I didn’t think it was a big deal,” he sighed, exasperated. It shouldn’t have been. 

“Why did you go? Are you and Malfoy friends now?” Hermione asked, looking almost as flabbergasted as Harry felt. Ron made a motion as if to imitate vomiting. “Oh, be mature, Ron!” Hermione snapped. “If Harry has other friends, even Malfoy, that’s fine. I for one think it’s good if they become friends since they are sharing a room. It’s better than him going on all the time about how much he hates Malfoy and trying to debunk his next scheme.”

“I’m not  _ friends _ with Malfoy,” Harry argued, feeling defensive suddenly. “It had nothing to do with  _ him _ . His mother did save me, so the least I could do was help her out.”

That was only partially true. He and Malfoy weren’t friends, and he wanted to help her since she did help him in the past. However, it did have  _ everything _ to do with Malfoy. Malfoy was the one who brought it up, the one who told him about the trial, the one who made him think. If Malfoy hadn’t mentioned it, would he even have known? Likely not.

“And that’s respectable, Harry,” Ginny interjected. “It’s just… Malfoy? He’s never done anything for you.”

“That’s not true,” Harry said, forcing all three to look at him with… well, he couldn’t tell what it was they were looking at him with, but it wasn’t joyous agreement. “Nevermind,” he said. “I expected you guys to understand why I was doing it, that’s all. It’s  _ not about Malfoy _ .”

“Just be careful with Malfoy, mate. He’s a snake, no joke intended.”

“There’s nothing to be careful about. We’re roommates - it’s not like we’re shagging!”

“I would hope not!” Ginny teased. She and Hermione broke into giggles. 

That was the last that was said of it, at least between those four. Harry was almost certain that others were talking about it behind his back, but he didn’t let it get to him. There wasn’t anything that should even affect him!

By the time the first Hogsmeade visit rolled around, Harry had almost forgotten the whole ordeal, focussing on Quidditch (including a win against Slytherin - yes!) and schoolwork. Ron and Hermione were somewhere in town and Ginny and Harry were together. Since Harry, Ron, and Hermione often hung out in the eighth year dorms in lieu of the Gryffindor ones, Harry saw Ginny less. It was a date.

A date.

Building up to it, Harry got less and less excited. Something about being with Ginny just didn’t feel  _ right _ . A relationship was crushing. It filled him with expectations he had to live up to and it sometimes felt like the only reason they were still together was because it was what was “expected” or “right” or “supposed to be.” 

Don’t get him wrong, he didn’t dislike Ginny. He just… didn’t know if he could keep up like this.

Harry wasn’t sure if he was with her because he was supposed to be, or because he “was supposed to be,” if that made any sense. It didn’t feel like destiny, like people said his parents were soulmates or the little comments Ron and Hermione made about each other. It didn’t feel inevitable because there was some kind of universal pull tugging his soul to hers, but it felt inevitable in the way that people had been saying it for years, so why not?

Hogsmeade dates were a classic, alright? Holding hands and warm butterbeer and the whole spiel. The town was bustling with couples, from third year “couples” just beginning to experiment with dating to those who may as well be married. Something about surviving a war does that to most people - trying to hold on to what’s there because it could so easily be swiped from you.

They had taken up a place on the skirts of town, sipping butterbeer, looking out over the trees from the rock they sat on. It was eerily silent, grey, ghastly. The clouds looked dark and heavy, as if a storm were rolling into the late November atmosphere. The dirt was tightly packed and practically frozen already. Harry’s hands were heated only by the heat from his cup and they both were adorned with Gryffindor scarves.

“I hope it snows later,” Ginny wished absentmindedly. “I love snow. Nasty to play Quidditch in, but… beautiful in its own merit.”

Harry hummed in agreeance. 

He made up his mind, in that moment. 

Ginny was a fire. She was strong and radiant and unrelenting. Harry, in opposition, was just exhausted. He had his achievements, but the difference was clear between those shoved into your hands and those worked earnestly for. It wasn’t fair to someone like Ginny to be in a relationship with her when Harry just couldn’t give that to her. 

“Hey, Gin?” he said. 

“Hm?” 

“We should break up.” He was blunt about it because there wasn’t another way to be about it. Had he ever really broken up with someone before? He’d only ever really dated Ginny, none of the rejections to admirers really counted, so he just said it as straightforward as he could.

“I really like you, and I’ve never liked anyone like I like you, and I still want to be your friend because you’re amazing, but being in a relationship… I don’t know, Ginny. I don’t know if I can do this. Since the battle, it’s just a lot, and I don’t know if this relationship is best for me right now.” Ginny said nothing, didn’t interrupt, didn’t get upset. “I’m really sorry. This probably doesn’t make sense - I’m saying I like you but I’m breaking up with you - and trust me, I know it doesn’t make sense, but it makes half as much sense to me.”

She leaned over and touched his hand gently. “It makes sense to me,” she said softly. “I understand.” 

“Thank you,” Harry smiled.

She checked her watch. “It’s getting late,” she announced. “We should get back so we don’t miss the ride home.”

On the way back, conversation even got back into a swing, Ginny pointing out something funny happening across the street. Back at the castle, they ate dinner, Harry and Ron and Hermione together, Ginny sitting with Neville farther down. 

A great weight had been lifted off of Harry’s chest.

He listened to Hermione and Ron discuss their day, and when asking him about his, didn’t mention the breakup. “We got lunch, and walked around, and stuff.”

However, when he returned to the dorm for the night, he didn’t expect to open the door and find Draco Malfoy, laying in bed, a bottle of Firewhiskey in one hand, a muggle novel on his lap. 

Harry threw himself on the bed, sighing. “Fancy a drink?” Malfoy asked. 

He sat up, regarding Malfoy, who had now shut his novel and was looking at Harry with interest, the bottle held out to him as an inclination that he should accept. Harry did, snatching the bottle and putting his lips to it, drinking rapidly, feeling the burn as he ran down his throat, lips sizzling where they were cracked from the quick temperature drop. 

“Save me some,” Malfoy said. “I was just getting started.”

Harry relented his battle with the strong alcoholic beverage, relinquishing it to Malfoy, who took it and set it down on the dresser. His novel was discarded, set aside on the bed, sitting cross legged and facing Harry. “You look like you’ve had quite the day, Potter,” Malfoy analyzed.

He made some sort of noise in agreement, saying, “Big on small talk now? How much have you been drinking?”

Malfoy shrugged. “Let’s just say that  _ this _ ,” he motioned to the bottle, “isn’t my first of the night.” Admittedly, he was weary of a drunken Malfoy, but as if reading his mind, Malfoy said, “Don’t worry, I can hold my liquor just fine.”

Warmness was starting to fill Harry’s body as the Firewhiskey was kicking in. It spread through his stomach and within a few minute had reached his fingertips and toes. He yawned, and Malfoy’s suggestion of, “Come sit over here,” was sounding very nice. 

It wasn’t as if Harry was shitfaced. No, he wouldn’t allow himself to get in that much of a drunken stupor. Drinking wasn’t really his thing. Some people turned to it after the war - he had seen too many students with flasks tucked in their robes - but it wasn’t Harry’s style. He had never actually gotten that drunk. Still, a drink once every so often wasn’t terrible; he particularly enjoyed the burn of the Firewhiskey, as it was a pleasant change from outside, which, when he looked out the window, was now snowing, as Ginny hoped. 

Even completely sober, he might not have said no to sitting with Malfoy. Since the trial - in all honesty, since he started making Harry potions - he had seen Malfoy… differently. This was a new side to Malfoy that he never knew before the war, but now, he seemed distinctly more human. The alcohol wasn’t clouding his judgement as he slipped off his shoes and carried himself over to Malfoy’s bed, mirroring his position.

“Tell me what’s so troubling about your big day… at Hogsmeade, I presume?” Malfoy said.

“Why do you care so much?” Harry inquired. 

“What, so I can’t be worried about my roommate?” He laughed, taking a swig of Firewhiskey. Incredulously, Harry began laughing alongside Malfoy. Not an occurrence he would have believed possible earlier in the year, but now, with the help of a little alcohol, he found it natural, almost.

“I broke up with Ginny,” he found himself admitting soon. Something was wrong about it, telling  _ Draco Malfoy _ before his two best friends. 

Malfoy passed him the bottle. “Trouble in paradise?” Harry shrugged before accepting and drinking.

“Do you drink often?” Harry asked, swirling the bottle as if to make a mini tornado within the tinted bottle, changing the subject and casting the conversation away from the woes of his love life, or lack thereof.

This time, Malfoy shrugged. “Sometimes. My mother doesn’t lock up her wine cupboard very well, you see, and sometimes it’s good to drink, at least that’s what I think. The only time my parents drank was only posh wine at big dinner parties, but drinking, by yourself, one evening in a blue moon, it’s decent. A good way to… think. Besides, I’m an adult now, so it’s not like it’s that big of a deal.”

Firewhiskey burned Harry’s throat, finishing the bottle. “It’s empty.”

Malfoy was quick to grab it and roll it under his bed. “You want another? I have more,” he offered. Harry quickly declined. 

“I had, like, half of that. That’s enough for me.”

“Is there a reason you accepted my invitation to drink? I was quite surprised you said yes. Most people don’t just drink with their proclaimed arch nemesis, do they?”

“I guess not, but are we really enemies anymore?” he asked. It didn’t feel like they were enemies. Would enemies brew potions for each other or vouch for their moms? No, this was nothing like it was in the past. They were acquaintances now, on friendly terms, on drinking terms.

“Do you want to be friends then?” Malfoy asked, one hundred percent serious.

Harry remembered the way Malfoy asked the question years ago, sticking out his hand and acting conceited. He brought down Ron and boasted his family name. It was only because of Harry’s name - if Potter wasn’t branded onto him, if he didn’t have that scar, Malfoy wouldn’t have given two shits about Harry. What would have been different if Harry said yes? He’d be a  _ Slytherin, _ for starters. He would have grown into an entirely different person than he was today, so it would be impossible to tell what would have happened. Yet, now, as Malfoy asked, there was no malice, just tipsy vulnerability. 

“Sure.” 

Malfoy smiled. “Can I tell you something?” When Harry made no protest, he continued. “I’ve wanted to be your friend since I met you. I always heard stories about you, and at first I did think it would be cool to be friends with  _ Harry Potter _ ,  _ The Boy Who Lived _ , and then I saw you, and I wanted to be your friend. And you rejected me and I was really… upset. Hurt. But I always wanted to be your friend.”

The Slytherin leaned forward, elbows on knees, waiting for a response.

“We’re friends now,” Harry stated the obvious.

Malfoy rolled his eyes. “Well spotted, Potter. It wasn’t as if we just agreed to that.”

“Glad to see you retain your undeniable wit even when drinking.”

“I told you I hold my liquor well, didn’t I?”

It was peculiar to look at Malfoy and see him as a friend. A friend, who Harry could talk to and joke with and have it be a good experience. Before this year, when had he ever had a good conversation with Malfoy? Never? And now, when his eyes met stone grey ones, they kept that same stoney color, but they lost their hardness. Malfoy was chatty tonight, was witty, was  _ casual _ . It must’ve been the alcohol talking, Harry chalked it up to. He would almost be unsurprised if he woke up and Malfoy declared them  _ not _ to be friends. It would be like a drunken one night stand, but instead of shagging, they just decided to be friends. 

“Well, yes, Malfoy you did… Wait, should I… call you Draco? Since we’re friends, right? I never call me friends by their last name.”

Malfoy - Draco? - contemplated this, finally saying, “If you’d like to. And I suppose that means I should call you Harry now?” He was met with a nod, a firm nod. 

What did this newfound friendship mean, though? Surely, Malfoy -  _ Draco _ \- wasn’t going to just start fourth-wheeling when Harry and Ron and Hermione did things? After all, he definitely wasn’t friends with them, and now that Harry thought about it, maybe it would be better to keep him and Draco’s friendship on the downlow, for the moment. They still were cold to him. But, what if Draco expected him to invite him to group outings and what not? It wasn’t like Draco had anyone else he routinely hung out with? In fact, most people didn’t like Mal-  _ Draco _ . Harry almost laughed out loud at the notion of Draco going places with their trio. That would definitely elicit some weird looks from people!

Friends.  _ Friends _ . What a word. It was heavy like a bowling ball and light like a feather. It sparked a fire in his chest and put him at ease. 

The thrill of having friends was not a new one to Harry. As a child, he rarely had friends, all getting chased away by Dudley or frightened by Harry’s abnormality, be it his magic that occasionally slipped through or his… unique home situation. Upon meeting Ron, that was the kind of excitement that didn’t go away. Ron was his best friend, a friendship strong and irreplaceable, with someone who, despite their ups and downs, was always supportive of Harry at the end of the day and always ready to do whatever he could to help Harry out. Adding Hermione to that was even better; they complimented each other perfectly.

But this was not the excitement Harry felt with Ron or Hermione. It was more ablaze. Its fire was not the nurturing, warming kind, progressively growing and becoming stronger. Harry felt like his chest had been lit on fire.

That was just the Firewhiskey, he tried to assure himself, because Draco Malfoy did  _ not _ make him feel like this.

He found himself, in their conversational lull, drawn in, like a child putting their hand on an oven burner, “just to see how it feels,” continuing to mirror Draco as he slid his elbows to his knees. His hand leaned forward, unintentionally brushing Draco’s leg, making Harry flinch back. He settled back, muttering an apology, and their eyes met.

He ought to have pulled back. Harry could feel the flames licking his face, and they were so close that those flames could have enveloped his lips in warmth.

Internally, he admonished himself. That was definitely not a thought he should have been having. Sure, he liked blokes just as much as he liked girls, but… Draco Malfoy? They had been friends for less than five minutes, and Harry shook it off as the Firewhiskey popping back in to say, “Hey.” 

Even worse, he had broken up with his girlfriend just that afternoon. He was not one to get back on the horse immediately, no, that just wasn’t something he would do. 

Draco pulled away, smiling, breaking Harry out of his trance-like state. 

“What time is it?” Draco asked, laying down and patting the pillow next to him. Harry followed suit, hesitant. 

From upside down, Harry could see out the window, see the snowflakes drifting down like a broomstick rider touching the earth again. Behind them was a mural of darkness, grey and royal blue and white cast by the moon and all the stars. It was dark, little moonlight seeping in through the windows and the rest to be lit by two candles on the nightstand. Harry’s thumb ran over the comforter of Draco’s bed, plush and cool under his hand. “Late,” he answered.

Draco turned his head to look at him, probably to make some snarky remark, but it was lost when their eyes locked. Harry was on the outside of the bed, to Draco’s left, facing the rest of the room, with Draco on his right, inside. Harry tilted his head in the direction of the blonde to find him already looking. Their eyes met, and Draco’s lips, half open, thought better of it and shut. After a few seconds, they reopened as he let out a yawn. 

“You’re my only friend here,” he admitted softly. “I’ve got shitty choice in friends, haven’t I?” It came out snide but not malicious. 

“I could agree with that,” Harry responded. He was never fond of any of the other Slytherins. Call it bias if you want, but they weren’t great people. Then again, Draco hadn’t been either, but here they were, face to face, sharing a bed. Those others - Crabbe, Goyle, Parkinson, Zabini - weren’t who Draco meant; it was supposed to be a dig at Harry, but even then, the part of Harry still caught in an endless timelapse of the war, and the straws that broke the camel’s back, knew it was terrible, he was terrible. So many things he could have done differently and helped people. He could have saved Cedric, Sirius… so many others he couldn’t even start to list. He jokingly replied to retain the light tone. 

Draco yawned again, looking up at the ceiling. In turn, it made Harry yawn. 

“Did you go to Hogsmeade today?” Harry asked, making conversation. 

The Slytherin nodded. “Where else would I have gotten the Firewhiskey? I didn’t stay for long, though. I got lunch and did some shopping, but that was about it. Hogsmeade’s less fun alone.”

Harry didn’t have a response to that, not a genuine one, but maybe he didn’t need a response. In the conversational interlude, he slowed his breathing down, down, down. His heart rate slowed with the motion of his lungs and his fingers stopped fiddling with the blankets. He let out one final yawn before he was pulled into darkness, asleep.

He should have been more cautious, more aware. His glasses were lopsided on his face and he hadn’t even taken his potion. Draco, to his side, propped himself upwards, slowly pulling the glasses off of the sleeping wizard and tossing them on the dresser. He shifted, reaching the trunk at the end of his bed and swiftly taking a gulp of sleeping draught. Harry Potter was asleep, a lump on the mattress, and there was no hope of waking him and getting him off of his bed and into his own, so Draco settled, turning his back to Harry and leaving space between them.

Draco himself was lulled into sleep, but sometime later, when he could barely see morning light, when a knee slammed roughly into his thigh, he woke with a jolt. 

Harry was tossing and turning, hands scraping the comforter and breath coming hard. Draco couldn’t go back to sleep, not with Harry tossing and turning and him and the light creeping in the window and his pounding headache that he  _ definitely _ did not have when he went to sleep. 

“Scarhead, wake up,” Draco demanded, but if Harry heard him, he made no acknowledgement. “ _ Harry! _ ” He snapped, voice harsher, a hand on Harry’s arm.

Maybe if he woke Harry up before the nightmare did, it wouldn’t be as bad.

In his hands, Harry tensed, sitting upward quickly and nearly taking Draco’s head off as he did so. He didn’t scream, didn’t cry, didn’t fall apart like he usually did. His breath was ragged, but Draco was bad at comforting people, so he awkwardly said, “Hey, um, it’s alright.” It wasn’t the most comforting, but it was something. Harry nodded, rubbing his eyes. 

“Yeah, yeah,” he agreed, more to reassure Draco more than because he was okay. Quickly, Harry slipped out of bed, groped for his glasses, and slipped out of the dorm. 

His head pounded. Though he knew in his mind it was just a little hangover from his half-bottle of Firewhiskey, he couldn’t help but associate headaches with Voldemort. He never got headaches except for Voldemort and hangovers. It was clearly one instead of the other, but that didn’t stop him from worrying. Harry slipped into the boys’ bathroom, turned on the faucet, and splashed water onto his face, easing away sleepiness and worry and his headache.

That nightmare… he had gone so long since a nightmare that all his memories must have pent up inside him, because that nightmare was one of the worst he had experienced. Maybe he had just forgotten how bad they truly were, going without them for a few months, but that was really something. If Malfoy - Draco - hadn’t woken him up, he didn’t know what he would have done. He knew if it woke him up, he would have been a human train wreck. Just remembering the details nearly destroyed his mind, making him want to cry and yell and break something. He forced it out of his mind. The memory of the nightmare became a haze in the background, an aura that vaguely affected how he felt, but pushing it back allowed him to carry out his day.

And how did he feel? Numb, mostly. Off, if you will.

He could still feel the burning gaze of Draco’s eyes and the fleeting thought of,  _ I could kiss him _ . He was reminded of the way he just  _ couldn’t _ be with Ginny, an amazing girl, the only person he’d ever had a real relationship with, because he  _ couldn’t _ . He thought of Ron and Hermione, getting their happy ever after and peacefully going through school, together. He thought of the way he felt isolated from everyone, everything.

Maybe this war had seriously fucked him up. Maybe it was worth it to have Voldemort around if it meant he could have normal human relationships.

As soon as he thought it, he was drowned in guilt. Of course it wasn’t worth it. So many were killed and tortured by Voldemort. If Harry had to sacrifice his sanity for a world without Voldemort, he would. He  _ had. _ And he would do it again. 

But  _ still _ . 

The nightmares? The inability to focus? The avoidance? Seriously?

A shower would help. He quickly hopped in and out of the shower, not bothering to wash his hair or anything, intending more than anything to wash away the things troubling his mind. Toweling himself dry, he dressed. He finished getting ready and descended to the dining hall to eat breakfast.

It was a Sunday morning, which meant that, at this hour, there were very few people in the dining hall. A group of young Hufflepuffs were reading textbooks at the far end of their table. Hagrid was eating, and Harry waved to him. As Harry sat down, a cat wandered through the room, and as it approached the teachers’ table, it transferred into McGonagall. The Ravenclaw seeker was chugging a cup of coffee, looking exhausted. Harry himself was yawning, and on the table in front of him appeared a coffee cup and pot filled with the bitter, black liquid. He filled it slowly.

On weekends, there was no set breakfast time, so house elves did shifts, making breakfast in smaller batches and waving them out. Harry ought to go down to the kitchens and thank them sometime.

Eyes closed, he held the cup to his face and took a sip. He felt the steam fog up his glasses and it burned as he swallowed. It wasn’t the same burn as last night’s Firewhiskey, but a scorching heat burn. The drink was bitter, but he bared it anyway. He had always been more of a tea guy himself, but the coffee helped wake him up and bring him out of his nightmare-induced stupor.

A pile of three scones on a glass platter appeared, and before Harry could set down his coffee and grab one, another hand was reaching out and taking one, the figure flopping down next to Harry. He looked through foggy glasses, seeing Draco, dressed, eating a cherry scone. 

“Hey,” Harry accused, “you took my scone.”

“And you woke me up. _And_ I have a bloody bad headache. It’s only fair,” Draco protested. Harry sighed but didn’t complain father. 

They dined the rest of the way in silence, drinking coffee and sharing scones. The plate refilled once they were done, so they just kept eating scones. 

After eating his fill, Harry stood. “Quidditch,” he said. “We have practice today. It doesn’t start for another hour, but I’m gonna go to the pitch.”

Draco followed in suit, walking with him to the door of the hall. Several kids had flocked to the dining hall, and Harry wouldn’t be surprised if they were watching Harry and Draco talk,  _ like friends _ . Harry couldn’t bring himself to care if they were or not. Staring, that is. “I’ve got a test in herbology tomorrow, so I’ll be off to study, then,” Draco said.

They split at the branching hallways from the dining hall, and Harry made his way to the Quidditch pitch. Finally, his headache was going away. He should have drank more water at breakfast, probably.

Whatever. He had Quidditch to play. He had work to do. He had games to win. So he went.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm half tempted to make a cracking open a cold one with the boys joke right now, haha. 
> 
> Thank you for reading. Please comment, bookmark, or leave kudos. It's greatly appreciated, so if you do, thank you!


	6. Harry

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry's feelings swirl in his mind like a bubbling cauldron in a potion as winter break approaches.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the long wait for the update. I've been working on some other stuff at the time being (if you like Yuri!!! on Ice, check out some of my other fics ;D) and put this one of the back burner, but alas! Chapter six...

His friendship with Draco faded into background noise. It was no longer this peculiar thing on his mind, no longer something that he was consciously aware of, at least not whenever he was around Draco. Their conversations became more casual and fluid. 

Harry was working on a project a week later, less than two weeks before it was December, and he was getting incredibly pent up and frustrated. History of Magic was  _ definitely _ the least useful class. When would Harry ever need to reference goblin sieges or the Salem witch trials? It just wasn’t something he needed.

“If you want to be an auror, Harry, you need to get high scores in  _ all _ of your classes, not just the ones you like,” Hermione told him, life he didn’t already know that. Did he even  _ want _ to be an auror still? He had pondered over it for months and he still didn’t know. The way it felt to make the world better - he liked that a lot. But he didn’t want to see only the bad anymore. It, like Ginny had, felt like it was something he was striving for because he felt like he was supposed to, not because he genuinely wanted to. Still, he knew what Hermione would say if he told her all that. You should strive to do well in all your classes anyway to open doors. What if he found something he wanted to do but couldn’t do to low scores?

This essay was  _ useless _ , though. He groaned, leaning back on his pillow, as Draco pushed open the door. 

“History essay, still?” Draco asked incredulously as he moved to the dresser and opened one of its drawers. The groan Harry gave back was answer enough. “Fancy a study break?” Draco proposed, slipping on black gloves and his Slytherin scarf. “I’m going on a walk.”

Harry  _ did _ fancy a study break, though he wouldn’t be opposed to having a week long study break if he could. He got up, pushing away his books and papers and pulling on boots. 

They walked downstairs together. Hermione and Ron weren’t in the common room, but where were they? Maybe it was a good thing that they were missing. No one really knew about Harry and Draco’s friendship. They did, obviously. Various people had seen them together, like the teachers at breakfast that one morning, but other than that, no one knew they were friends now. Roommates, sure. Interacted some, definitely. But friends? Who would assume Harry Potter, war hero, and Draco Malfoy, Death Eater, were friends? 

It was nothing serious anyway. Harry had other friends and Draco knew that. 

Outside the castle, Harry was shivering madly. They walked down the steps and in the general direction of the forest beyond the grounds. Harry had known it was snowing but wildly underestimated the thermoregulatory abilities of his cloak. All warmth had abandoned him and he rubbed his rapidly reddening hands together to get some sort of friction or warmth. 

“If you get hypothermia, I’m not letting anyone blame me for your death,” Draco informed Harry jokingly.

“Then warm me up, you git.” The words were out of Harry’s mouth before he had a chance to think about what he was actually saying. They fell silent, Draco looking confused at the sudden exclamation and Harry taking a second to process the meaning of what he just said. 

The two stopped walking. 

“Are you serious?” Draco asked, tone unwavering. 

Harry’s face lit up with a bright red blush that, for once this walk, made him feel warm. His cheeks, which were already red from the cold, lit up like Christmas tree lights. “Of course I’m not serious,” he stammered out, but it was too late, because Draco was already unwrapping his Slytherin scarf from around his neck, exposing the pale skin underneath to the elements. He leaned forward, draping the scarf around Harry’s neck. He let one end fall on Harry’s chest, wrapping it once, twice, and throwing the other tasseled end behind Harry’s back. It came up to cover Harry’s mouth, no longer breathing out puffs of white, like a dragon. It was warm with Draco’s body heat, and began to capture Harry’s escaping energy. It didn’t warm up his fingers or toes, but it definitely helped. 

Wearing the Slytherin scarf felt wrong; wearing  _ Draco’s _ scarf felt… right. It was emerald green and platinum, alternating between the two colors in stripes, just like the Gryffindor one did. At the end was the house emblem, the snake, embroidered into it. Dangling off the ends was green fringe, little, tightly wound strings that shook as they took up walking again. Draco started walking first, leaving Harry one step behind, and Harry brought his right hand out of his pocket and up to the scarf, fingering the green yarn.

Harry had to admit, he was warmer now. 

The Slytherin boy turned around to look at Harry, take in the sight of him feeling the scarf as if it were something foreign. It  _ felt _ foreign; it felt new. “Coming?” he asked, raising a thin, blonde eyebrow.

“Yeah, sorry,” Harry responded quickly. He stepped forward, following in the footsteps of Draco. They marched onward through the snow, and their conversation turned as silent as the snow, falling gracefully in soft, fluffy layers. Snow was… Harry didn’t like the snow that much. It was terrible conditions for Quidditch, especially as a seeker; trying to find the one golden glint when you could hardly see ten feet in front of you was the worst. It was cold and fierce and graceful.

Almost, Harry’s mind added unwillingly, like Draco.

Harry had been watching Draco for years - the way he acted, the way he talked,  _ everything _ . It had always been out of an innate loathing. He wanted to make sure Draco - Malfoy, then - wasn’t up to anything, wasn’t going to hurt the people who had become his family. He knew that Draco was conceited and arrogant, even now. Draco Malfoy had closed off his walls, colder than the ice beneath their shoes. Did anyone know the real Draco? Did anyone else at school know how he saved Harry’s life or how devastated he was when he friend died? Come to think of it, did  _ Harry _ even know the real Draco? They were friends, but that didn’t mean they knew everything about each other. Draco didn’t know the way that Harry had been treated by the Dursleys or, really, anything.

Harry  _ wanted _ to know Draco, which was the scariest part. He wanted to know Draco more than he wanted to know anyone. He had always been a mystery, whereas Ginny, or Hermione, or Ron, or Neville, or Dean, or Seamus, or anyone else Harry had been friends with, they had always been open books.

He wanted to like Draco; he wanted to be friends with Draco. He did; he was. 

What if Draco opened up to Harry and Harry didn’t like what he found?

Stupid. Bloody stupid. Harry hardly had a reason to be friends with Draco. A few kind actions, but that was all. So many people were nice to Harry for their own gain; was Draco any different? The Draco Harry knew was selfish and demanding and nothing at all like the graceful figure standing by him as they walked.

Harry didn’t have a reason to be friends with Draco, a reason to be on this walk, a reason to think about what he wanted with Draco when all he should’ve wanted was silence at best.

Simultaneously, Harry was tired of doing what he was supposedly supposed to do. He was with Ginny because it was what he was supposed to do. He was going to become an auror because it was what he was supposed to do. Being friends with Draco… broke that.

So maybe, if he wanted to be friends with Draco, that was okay. If he wanted to know the man who lied beneath the exterior and beneath the wretched tattoo, maybe that was okay. And maybe, just maybe, if he was tempted to kiss Draco… maybe that was okay.

He shook off the thought.

“You seem lost in thought,” Draco commented.

Before Harry had time to think of a response, they rounded a bend in their path and found Hagrid, standing a little ways away, down by his hut. He saw them and waved. Harry didn’t think twice about waving back, but Draco had a little different response, turning stiff and pursuing his lips. Hagrid waved them down, motioning for them to join him. Harry jerked his head towards the teacher, motioning that Draco ought to join. Draco shook his head, blonde hair, never pushed back these days, flopping around.

“He doesn’t like me very much,” Draco noted. “I’ll see you later.” Then he was gone.

Hagrid greeted Harry with a grin. “Your friends are inside. Came to say hello. I figured you’d want to see them. They were wondering where you were. Said they went to your dorm and you was gone,” Hagrid said, opening the door. 

The interior was warm, blasting Harry with a wave of heat. Hagrid followed the student in, carrying a log that he had gone out to retrieve, tossing it on the fire. Hagrid pushed a cup of tea into Harry’s hands as he sat down next to Ron and Hermione, who had said nothing since Harry arrived.

“Is that a Slytherin scarf?” Ron asked in disbelief. 

Harry had forgotten about that completely, face turning a Gryffindor scarlet as he remembered it. He reached up to take it off, embarrassed. “Oh, this?” he said, trying to play it off. “This is nothing, really.”

“I was wondering why you were with Malfoy-” Hagrid commented as he sat across from them, stirring the fire. 

“ _ Malfoy? _ ” Hermione whispered, as if she heard incorrectly.

“-today, and the other morning, too, when you went down for breakfast,” Hagrid continued.

Ron and Hermione were surprised, to say the least. They never heard about their night of shared Firewhiskey and friendship agreements. Harry hadn’t even told them about the sleeping potions. His friends, he had known, would freak out. Besides, he did have his own life. It wasn’t theirs. It wasn’t the media’s. It was  _ his _ . The group looked at Harry, searching for an explanation.

“He and I are friends,” Harry spit out at last. 

“You’re wearing his bloody scarf,” Ron added, as if to emphasize.

Silence fell, and was broken with, “Are you and Malfoy a  _ thing? _ ”

Blood rushed to Harry’s cheeks. The memory of the desire to kiss Draco hit him like a brick, painful and awkward and all too much. He had been drunk and it was the heat of the moment, so even if he could excuse it, they were not a thing, thank you very much. Still, that it had been put out on the table, as blunt as it had been, was not very comforting. “I can’t be friends with a bloke without shagging him now?” Harry asked. “Well, Ron, I guess I should have told you, but I guess since we’re friends, we’ve been a thing since first year. Sorry to have waited so long to tell you.” Sass bubbled up, mixing with embarrassment and frustration. “By the way, I’m also shagging Dean and Seamus and Neville, just so you know.”

When had Harry stood up? He couldn’t remember standing, but there he was, balancing on the balls of his feet, ready to bolt. 

It wasn’t really a big deal; at least, it shouldn’t have been. He could have clarified and it would have been fine.

Yet, he was so tired of feeling like he had to do things. Fate was, frankly, becoming bullshit to him. It was fate for him to be with Ginny. It was fate for him to be an auror. It was fate for him to hate Draco Malfoy. 

“I’ll talk to you guys later,” Harry announced, waving a hand, and walking right out of the abode.

Days came and went. Harry, Ron, and Hermione weren’t exactly fighting about it, so they continued to talk and interact normally. Without mentioning Draco, thankfully. The same applied to Hagrid. They still spoke, but the subject of the blonde Slytherin boy was out the window. By the time that Christmas break rolled around, it was as if everyone had forgotten about it. It wasn’t as if Harry and Draco hung out in a group setting anyway.

There was the minor issue of Harry spending the winter holiday break with the Weasleys. Every time he was with them, including the summer before school started up again, he couldn’t help but feel the pressing weight of Fred’s absence. He knwe that, despite the time that had passed, everyone was still grieving. And it was Harry’s fault. Guilt washed over him, because it was his fault. If he had ended that war before it started, he would be alive.

When someone made a comment about Harry and Ginny’s lack of affection for each other on the first night - Harry couldn’t even remember who anymore - Ginny announced their breakup. Apparently, Harry wasn’t the only one who hadn’t told anyone. No one made any comments to his face, but he knew they were surprised, maybe even upset.

The sleeping arrangements were different than in the past. This trip, Harry was going to sleep in Fred’s old bed, a feat he was not looking forward to. On his way to the room, he passed where Ron and Hermione were staying, sharing a bed like a real couple. 

“I can’t believe that he broke up with her. And that he never even told us!” Harry heard Ron’s voice, slowing to eavesdrop. “I thought… I don’t know, I thought that they were supposed to be, you know, like the  _ it _ couple. Ginny’s looked up to him forever. ‘Mione, she  _ loves _ him. And I thought he loved her too.”

Harry bit his lip. He and Ginny never officially shared  _ I love you _ ’s. He cared about her, liked her, loved her like family, but he hadn’t gotten so far as to say he was in love with her. 

“It’s not just that. He’s friends with Malfoy. Which, I know, you said he’s allowed to have other friends, and yeah, he is, I just don’t get why he’s not telling us anything. Plus, Malfoy’s been a real arse to all of us. How are they even friends?”

Hermione’s voice responded. “Ron, he’s probably going through a lot of shit after everything he went through. I understand, I don’t know why he didn’t tell us, but I feel  _ bad _ for him. After everything… He probably needs time. You know he was having nightmares. If he still is…”

Her voice went quiet. Harry wanted to tell them, to explain, but he  _ couldn’t _ . Where to start, even? The only thing he knew was that he didn’t want their pity. He didn’t want her to feel bad. But Ron… Ron sounded upset, even hurt. But how in the world was Harry supposed to explain that Draco helped him, that Draco wasn’t a complete arse? How could he explain looking at Ginny and feeling affection but it feeling  _ off _ , but looking at Draco and wanting to  _ kiss _ him? How could he tell them? He couldn’t.

“I just want him to tell us these things, ‘Mione. We’re his friends.”

“I know.”

He heard one of them stand up off of the bed they were sitting on, and Harry scampered down the hallway to avoid being caught. Pushing the door to the room he was sharing with George, he tiptoed into the room. It was late, but not super late, maybe ten in the evening. George was already asleep, the lights off and the curtains drawn. Harry slid around the room, setting down his day clothes and taking a swig of the potion - Draco gave him a full bottle of sleeping draught before they split - and flopping into bed.

This wasn’t his bed; this bed belonged to Fred. Fred, who was dead because of a war that Harry caused, that hung over his head disastrously. Fred whose pranks were funny and who had been a part of a tag team that helped Harry so much over the years. Fred, who left a lonely twin behind, whose fire had been reduced to mere sparks after his death.

Harry closed his eyes. He wished he could forget the war.

He wished so badly. 

By the time he opened his eyes again, it was early, early in the morning and an owl was tapping at the window. He pushed his glasses on his face and looked over. George hadn’t been roused by the sound, so he opened the window a crack. He had seen this owl before; it was Draco’s owl, and she had a letter tied to her leg. Harry undid the string, taking the parchment, and ruffling her feathers. She flew away quickly into the almost-dark morning. 

Draco’s handwriting scrolled on the page, and Harry read quickly.

_ Harry, _ the first line introduced, with a little lightning bolt doodle.

_ Would you fancy joining my mother and I at our manor one day over break? I’m assuming you have plans with the Weasleys on Christmas, but would the twenty-eighth work? If so, floo over to our manor at eight. _

_ Draco _ .

Harry folded the letter up, tucking it in his bag. 

He wanted to go. Hermione and Ron would hate it, but he wanted to go. 

Downstairs, Harry hung out until the others woke up. He sat in the living room, reading. Molly would be up to cook breakfast soon, and Arthur would rise to go to work. Hermione was the first one, besides Harry, awake, and she padded down the stairs, saying quietly, “Morning, Harry.”

“Morning, Hermione. There’s coffee in the kitchen if you want some.” Harry set the book down to join her where she sat at the table. He wanted to tell her about Draco’s letter. He fretted over it. He could still hear Ron’s voice from the previous night, pleading for Harry to  _ just tell them things _ . Ron was his best friend, as was Hermione. It should have been easy to tell them. 

“Is something on your mind?” she asked, pouring herself a cup of joe. 

Harry’s stomach twisted, and he said softly, “Draco invited me to the manor one day over break.”

She took a drink and responded, “Are you going to go?”

“I think so.”

“Can I ask you something? Please don’t get mad. If not, I’ll let it drop but… do you fancy Malfoy?”

Did Harry fancy him? No, absolutely not. He was friends with Draco, but nothing more. Regardless, the thought remained in his mind, the touch of Draco’s hands, the warmth of his scarf, what it would feel like to  _ kiss _ him…

“I don’t know,” Harry admitted after the weight of a couple silent seconds passed. 

Before Hermione could respond, Molly came tromping down the stairs, happy and positive as can be. She didn’t seem to have heard any of their conversation, and as she said, “Good morning! Who’s hungry?” Harry felt the blush that had been growing on his cheekbones disperse. 

They followed their routine. Molly would could, they’d all eat together, and Arthur would go to work. Everyone would hang out or play Quidditch or cast spells. The days came and went, and the break was, in a way, generic. To some people, generic and routine sounds boring; they’d rather be out having adventures. For Harry, it was nice to spend the time with his family, as he had had enough adventures, thank you very much. 

For Christmas, he got an “H” sweater, courtesy of Molly, bless her soul. He got somes broom stuff and a couple books. They had a big family dinner together. All day, the house was filled with the sounds of magical pots clinking and clanking in the kitchen and the smell of a ham being roasted in the oven.

The holiday was plain, and Harry loved every single second of it.

Even, over the break, he talked to Ginny more. Yes, he had liked her, but it wasn’t the kind of relationship he needed. Ginny was mature and respectful; even though they drifted their separate ways right after, their close quarters allowed them to talk more, and it felt natural.

And then, there was the matter of the twenty-eighth. 

He wanted to go to Draco’s, but he didn’t. He wanted to see Draco, strangely enough. Actually, it wasn’t as strange as it should have been, but they were friends. Obviously, Draco wanted to see him too, which made his stomach churn. A small, anxious fire burnt in his abdomen. What if he doesn’t want to be friends, and this is all some big scheme to get back at me for everything I’ve done? How will I react being back in that building? Because that was one of the cons of going, a list that seemed to keep getting longer and longer. The memories he had of the Malfoy Manor were not good memories. He had gotten used to repressing some of the traumatic thoughts, but sometimes - like his nightmares - they refused to stop. What would happen if he showed up and had an absolute breakdown?

Plus, there was the Weasleys to think about. The only person who knew of Draco’s proposal was Hermione; he trusted she would spill the beans to no one, not even Ron. Surely, Ron would have mentioned it if she had. But he would be flooing there, at eight. If anyone else was awake, they would surely know exactly where he was going, because he had learned his lesson about not annunciating properly when flooing.

Still, the day came, and at seven fifty-five in the morning he crept downstairs. Everyone had fallen into a pattern of late nights and late mornings, so no one was awake. He was careful not to let the stairs creak as he descended them. No one was in the kitchen or living room. The coast was clear.

Harry grabbed a handful of the powder and stepping into the wide fireplace. Soot rubbed off on his shoes, but thankfully, his black robes would omit any scuff marks. He tossed the powder down in one motion, saying quietly but forcefully, “Malfoy Manor”

The world spun and spun and he was surrounded by color and noise. The whole process took a few seconds, and he saw the colors fade from the warm reds and oranges of the Weasleys’ household to cold silvers and greens. He spun and he spun and he spun.

Harry unceremoniously tumbled from a grand fireplace, regaining his balance in front of an unfazed Malfoy, who peaked his eyes up from the novel he was reading.

“Welcome,” he said dramatically, forced so, and making Harry crack a smile, “to the Malfoy Manor.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As usual, thanks for reading! Kudos and bookmarks are always appreciated, as are comments, thanks!!


	7. Draco

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Malfoy Manor definitely cleans up when there's not a raging terrorist group residing in it.

Harry didn’t seem to be immediately launched into a PTSD flashback, so that was the second biggest perk of his arrival.

The first? That Harry showed up at all. 

The manor’s aura had changed dramatically since the last time Harry had been their. His mom, not having been working, had really fixed it up, with nothing else to do but mope and mourn. Nothing against the mourners and the mopers, but that wasn’t really her style. She was headstrong and anxious, but not a moper. 

Darkness was replaced with open windows letting in light and a grandview of the garden and the French countryside beyond. The dirty places had been cleaned up. Some new furniture mingled with the expensive vintage pieces. All that his mother left entirely untouched was his room and the library. 

He gave Harry a tour, a  _ proper _ tour, of the manor, shelving the novel he’d been reading as they wandered through the library.

“I don’t recognize any of these titles,” Harry said, looking confused. Then again, he was usually at least somewhat confused.

“They’re muggle novels,” Draco answered, only making Harry more perplexed. “The one I’m reading - A Tale of Two Cities - is good. It’s about the French revolution-”

Harry interrupted with, “Since when do you read muggle novels?”

“All year; I would say I’m surprised you never saw them laying around, but I’m really not. You’re  _ quite _ oblivious. You need every single thing spelled out for you, letter by letter.”

They emerged from the aisle, into the expanse of the rest of the room. There was one long table, dark and stained wood, with chairs on each end and along the lengthy sides. A chandelier hung from up above, crystal and sparkling. Draco’s socks - he didn’t wear shoes in the house - made no noise on the hardwood floors and plush rugs.    
“I’m not that oblivious!” Harry protested, yawning. It was too early for this. 

In response, Draco only laughed.

He led him from the library to other guest rooms. They were all nearly copies of each other, with the same queen beds and white comforters and three drawer dressers and windows, with light shining through thin white curtains. Draco purposefully skipped the one at the end, with a personal bathroom and a bed Draco refused to touch and too many memories that made his stomach bubble.

In another wing of the house was the family bedrooms. His parents shared the master suite, and next door, Draco pushed the door open, announcing, “This is my room.”

Underwhelming. Anticlimactic. Any synonyms of those words describe Harry’s reaction when Draco showed him the room. His face was blank, and he said, “It’s so… empty.”

Draco frowned. It was not  _ empty _ . It was spacious, yes, but it had to be, since it held a king bed, the only king bed in the house, thank you. It’s covers were  _ green _ , with  _ silk _ grey sheets beneath. The dresser had more than three drawers, and the closet was organized well. It even had its own bathroom off to the side. Sure, it changed a little bit over the years - for example, the trunk at the foot of the bed no longer held toys, but his Quidditch stuff, and he had a bookcase in his room, so he didn’t have to go to the library every time he wanted a book and he could have his textbooks - but other than that, it had always been the same. Draco was, could he say, proud of it.

He valued things besides materialistic things and money and family names, now. He had learned to do that. But perhaps, some things, like his room, with deep, infinite roots, just never change.

“It’s not  _ empty, _ ” he said, motioning his hand at his bed and bookcase and dresser. “There’s things there. Are your glasses not working today?”

“No, I know there’s  _ things _ there, it just seems… I don’t know, unlived in, I guess? There’s no life to it. Where’s the posters, the trinkets, the  _ personal _ stuff? I know I’m not one who can really comment on room design - I’ve never really had a room of my own to customize - but this room… it’s just a fancier version of the guest rooms. If you hadn’t said it was your room, I’d have no clue it was.”

Draco bit his lip. Harry had a point. Still, his room had been like this forever, and it was  _ his room _ . 

Instead of admitting that Harry was right, Draco huffed a, “Come on, I’ll show you the garden.”

He tugged on the end of Harry’s sleeve, pulling him out of the minimalist room. They descended a long, swooping staircase, out the back door in the kitchen, and outside to the backyard. The Malfoy Manor covered a significant chunk of land, so the gardens were seemingly endless. There were trees and bushes. Unfortunately, due to the frosty season, they were almost empty; fruits weren’t in season and green trees and bushes lost their leaves. Evergreens did stand in the distance, though, and a section of magical plants melted the snow in one corner. 

“There’s a greenhouse,” Draco added, motioning for Harry to follow him into the snow. Behind them, a trail of footsteps revealed their every move. “We used to have more house elves who would take care of the garden, but now that it’s just me and my mom, she does it. She’s still asleep, if you’re wondering,” he said as an afterthought. “Have you eaten breakfast?”

“No,” Harry said. “I left before Mrs. Weasley cooked anything.”

They reached the greenhouse, and Draco lifted the latch that kept the heat in. Upon going to Hogwarts, Draco had always compared the greenhouses at the school to that of his own, but for Harry, it must’ve been the opposite. 

Likewise, though, they were almost the same. In his family’s greenhouse, it was all glass, with a slanted roof. A walkway through the middle with several branches was the only place to walk; everything else flourished with life. It was, true to its name, very green. At the end of the path, there were tables along the width of the greenhouse that had potted plants stacked on top. Hanging from the ceiling were various baskets with greenery draping over the sides. 

Draco closed the door behind them so the heat wouldn’t escape. Going from negatives in celcius to the heat and humidity of a greenhouse was like a punch in the face. Harry took it all in, looking at plants from every possible angle. He could hardly see the contrasting white outside. 

“Did you sneak out?” Draco asked.

“I wouldn’t say sneak out, exactly, but everyone else was asleep and only one person knew where I was going. Does that count as sneaking out?”

“Basically, yeah, that’s exactly sneaking out.” 

Harry waved Draco off dismissively, studying some plants in front of him. Harry had snuck out to come see him. And, yes, in Draco’s book, that was exactly sneaking out. Leaving to an unknown location while everyone else is asleep. What else would that be?

They left the greenhouse, returning to the main house. Draco didn’t ask who was the one person who knew about Harry’s secret visit. (And there was no point guessing - it could be anyone.) They toed off their shoes by the back door, Draco sliding the glass door closed. Walking into the house was like walking into the greenhouse; it was warm and inviting.

“Hungry?” Draco asked, bending over to grab a pan out of the cabinet. He stood up, emerging with a stainless steel pan. “Do you like eggs?” Harry nodded, hopping up on the counter. “Wow, Draco said, “Classy.”

“Yep, that’s me,” Harry agreed sarcastically as Draco turned on the stovetop. He could feel Harry’s eyes on him as he worked, like a spell burning into him. His back, his face, his arms,  _ him _ . No matter which way he turned, no matter what he did, Harry’s eyes were on him. It made him feel vulnerable, exposed. Draco didn’t like feeling vulnerable and exposed.

He had gotten pretty good at hiding that, the vulnerability. He worked under Voldemort for far too long, doing things he never wanted to do, and he kept up this facade, because around the Death Eaters, vulnerability had consequences. If he broke down, it could result in the deaths of people he cared about. He kept it together through the war, but afterward, he afforded himself some moments. Not many, but enough. Perhaps, too many. He spent nights in the manor, awake, panicking. He let himself wake up screaming. But it was very little. He lost himself in books and when school came back, he rebuilt the walls, reinforced them with steel and brick and spells. He brewed potions for his nightmares; he kept a calming potion on him, just in case. Did he want to be called a murderer and other names all day? Yes. Did it bother him? Of course But he wouldn’t admit it. It made him vulnerable. It made him weak.

Harry stared at him. And Harry was an idiot, but it still made him feel like Harry was scraping away, layer by layer, and finding out all the things Draco had buried down deep. Not just the Voldemort stuff, but things that went back much, much longer. 

“Can you go find the pepper in the cabinet?” Draco asked, waving his hand at a big pantry on the other side of the room, facing away from Draco. It was a wild goose chase, not that he would admit it. There was no pepper in the cabinet. He knew this because just the other day, when he was cooking his mom eggs, he rummaged through the whole cabinet, and they were out. 

(Disappointing, really. It was the fancy shit, big and expensive, with a grinder built into the container. Very flavorful.)

Harry dug through the pantry while Draco tried to keep the scrambled eggs from burning. He wasn’t the best chef and had little experience before the last couple months, but he held his own. Unfortunately, less than a minute later, Harry returned to the counter, triumphant, holding an unopened container of pepper. “Found it!” he announced happily. The Gryffindor leaned on the granite expanse, pushing a carton of eggs away. “Need it now?”

Draco sighed. “Sure. Can you open it for me?” Harry did, and handed it to Draco. He grabbed it, only half paying attention, and felt only half his hand wrap around the container. His fingers landed on something warmer. He diverted his attention to the pepper, seeing his hand on top of Harry’s. “I-” he said. “Sorry.” Draco took the container and opened it, grinding pepper onto the yellow food. He looked out of the corner of his eye to see Harry looking down at his hand, blinking, cheekbones flushed red.

“They’re done,” Draco said.

He grabbed two plates out of the cabinet, separating the eggs onto them and handing Harry a fork. They leaned over the counter and ate because it was better than sitting at the dining table. In fact, Draco hadn’t really eaten at the table his entire stay at the manor this winter. 

“These are good,” Harry commented between forkfuls of food. The conversation, past that, dulled, not that it had been very fruitful to begin with. Draco couldn’t help but note that it was strange, finally being friends with Harry Potter. He wanted to.  _ Merlin, _ had he wanted to, but after that initial rejection, he thought they never would. It was weird to think that the same Harry Potter standing next to him and eating his breakfast was the same Harry Potter who sent a spell that left cuts that were still pink and stood out against his pale skin.

It was really weird. But it wasn’t bad.

Draco didn’t actually have any plans for the day. He didn’t even know if Harry was going to show up. Most of the time he hung out with his friends - or, well, used to - they sat around and talked. Once their plates were in the sink and the mess was cleaned up, Draco and Harry found themselves sitting in the library. Harry looked through the shelves, and they wandered, and Draco gave him random tidbits of information. 

“Yes, my mom’s side of the family knew him way back. This is the handwritten copy of his book. It’s still in print today but this one has the notes in the margins and stuff.” Draco’s hand ran lazily down the spine of a leather bound journal. Harry gave him a quizzical look. “What is it?’

“I don’t know. You just… surprise me. Like, you’re not terrible,” Harry said, possibly the least smooth thing he could have said, but Draco laughed, turning back to the shelves. 

“Thank you? And, well, likewise.”

Harry put a hand on Draco’s shoulder, causing him to turn around. He was going to say something, honest, but he got caught on his words. They stared at each other for a couple seconds, both in their own confusion, before their lips met. 

Draco didn’t know who leaned in first, but he knew that  _ he was kissing Harry Potter _ . Harry Potter, whose lips were softer than they looked, whose hands raised up and settled on his shoulders, who stepped forward and wow, were they close. Draco had never kissed anyone, let alone had their hands on his shoulders or their chests so close that when the breathed they touched. Draco had never been overly affectionate, but this was okay.

He set his hands on Harry’s waist, breathing and calming his beating heart. And they had broken apart for a second, but then they were kissing again.

When Harry finally stepped back, Draco was breathing a little harder than he felt he should have been. He could feel the heat on his cheeks and the coldness on his shoulders where Harry’s hands were no longer sitting. Draco lifted his hands from Harry’s hips, looking to the side. He let his attention be captured by another book, instead of Harry’s red cheeks and askew glasses. 

“ _ This  _ one…” Draco started, hardly able to find words. Harry let out a laugh.

* * *

 

“It’s getting late,” Harry said. “Almost dinner. I should- I should go. Thank you. Owl me?”

“Of course.” 

“One last thing,” Harry added, stepping away from the fireplace. He cupped Draco’s head in his hand, softly placing a kiss on his lips. This one was much smoother and confident than their first - and only - other one. It was gentle. 

“I’ll talk to you later, then.”

He stepped into the fireplace, and there was green.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the late chapter! School, sports... You know how it is. I've also decided that after this, there will be one more chapter. Thank you for reading and hopefully sticking around to the end. I'm not sure when the new chapter will be up, likely sometime in October. As usual, thank you for those who comment and leave kudos.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! The idea for an eighth year fic has been in my mind for a year, but I finally got time to get it written. I will hopefully be updating regularly (Not everyday, maybe weekly or biweekly) since it's summer, but bear with me. 
> 
> This work is still in beta. I did a preliminary edit, but I will do a full edit after the whole work is done and posted. I apologize for any errors, but I hope you enjoyed this chapter and will enjoy the next chapters regardless!
> 
> Feedback is greatly appreciated.
> 
> My tumblr is unfortunatelackofaliens, and you can follow me there to see posts letting people know when I update.


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